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PLAY AND 



PROFIT 



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MY GARDEN 



Rev. Er P.^ROE, 

AUTHOR OF 

"Barriers Burned Away." 



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NEW YORK: ^^ 

DODD & MEAD, PUBLISHERS, 

762 BROADWAY. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

DODD&MEAD, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



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'P H I s j3 o o 



Affectionately Dedicated 



HONORED FATHER 



PREFACE. 



This is not a scientific work, as the reader will soon dis- 
cover. I know that lofty minds will pass it by in silent dis- 
dain. I have not tried to make the world wiser. Let the wise 
do that. 

Nor is it a manual, giving in terse, sharp periods, the greatest 
amount of accurate information in briefest space. My style, I 
fear, is like my garden, w-hich grows successfully many weeds, 
while attempting something useful. I never could write a 
manual any more than I could work steadily in my garden at 
one thing all day. I always did like to weed near tlie straw- 
berry-bed or the raspberries, on the same principle. I fear 
that when a boy (?) I enjoyed sitting near the choir, where 
I could glance at the pretty singers during the dry passages 
of the sermon. Do we not need occasional relaxation from 
the severe duties of life ? 

In brief, it is my sincere conviction that a garden is good 
for humanity (see Genesis ii. 8), and it is my wish to diffuse 
this belief as widely as possible. 

I frankly admit that the following pages arc very mucli the 
same in character as if I had taken the reader by the arm, 



4 PREFACE. 

from time to time, and strolled around my garden-paths (which 
are irregular and straggling as my story), and chatted in a famil- 
iar way on the topics suggested as we passed along. 

I know that I shaU be met at the outset by that inevitable 
Yankee question, " Does a garden pay ? " 

I might answer indignantly, does it pay to kiss your wife, 
to, dandle your baby, or to go back to the past (?) to look 
at the choir, or do anything else agreeable to human nature ? 

Is the gain in health, strength, and happiness, which this 
Eden form of recreation secures, to be gauged by the doUar 
symbol ? 

Can the flavor of your o\\'n crisp lettuce or strawberries and 
cream be bought? Is the perfume of the flowers that your 
own hands have planted, to be had in the market ? 

I don't believe that Eden was laid out on the principle of 
a "truck -garden," every inch being planted in a profitable 
crop; nor do I think that Adam and Eve bustled out every 
morning with the expression seen on so many American faces, 
" Time is money." The question in regard to a garden seems 
to me to be, shall we enjoy a little bit of Pai-adise this side 
of Jordan? 

Still aware of the general indifference to Paradise on either 
side of Jordan, I hasten to state that my garden did pay in 
dollars and cents, and I think yours can be made to do the 
same, my reader, as I shall try to prove in the following pages. 



PLAY AND PROFIT 



MY GARDEN. 



I. 

WILL YOU WALK INTO MY GARDEN? 

Two thousand dollars seems a snug sum to a 
quiet, professional man, but to a country parson, 
pastor of a struggling church, it looms up into 
the regions of the sublime. 

But when at the close of '71 I came to sum 
up the results of my small garden of about two 
acres, I found the grand total to be this rather 
surprising amount. 

If this success had grown out of some lucky 
stroke of fortune, I should not have intruded a 



S WILL you WALK INTO MY GARDEN ? 

small personal matter on the public. But I am 
one that the fickle goddess has rarely smiled 
upon, and hard work has been the only Alad- 
din's lamp of my experience. Again, the world 
is ever agape at those gifted with genius, who 
flash with meteoric brilliancy through striking 
and original means to astonishing results. Alas ! 
my modest little garden has never been the 
scene of any such agricultural pyrotechnics, and 
I warn the reader from the start, that he will 
find nothing to dazzle or bewilder in the follow- 
ing pages. There will be a record of facts and 
figures, of many blunders, lame experiments, 
and not a little neglect. In brief, it will be my 
way of doing it ; and already, in imagination, 
upon the face of many a notable reader, (if I se- 
cure the attention of any such,) I see an expres- 
sion of supreme disgust and horticultural dis- 
dain. I hear them say in tones that would 
blight a hardy perennial : 



WILL YOU WALK INTO MY GARDEN? 9 

" The idea of raising anything by such rough 
commonplace methods ; it's a wonder he got 
his seed back." 

Yet, thanks to kindly Mother Earth, she will 
give a struggling onion or a radish a good lift 
on in the world, though straggling about in 
places where they have no business to be, and 
not planted according to " the book." At 
times, when absent from home, I have met 
some of "the agricultural authorities," and have 
ventured to put my " small treble " in the sono- 
rous discussions of the ways and means. But 
they would look over their spectacles at me with 
an expression such as might rest on the venera- 
ble faces of a Presbytery of ripe and thoroughly 
indoctrinated divines, when a young licentiate 
presumes to express an opinion on that which 
they had settled long ago. In fact, I was at first 
led into painful misgivings, and feared that on 
my return I should find a miserable blight steal- 



lO WILL YOU WALK INTO MY GARDEN? 

ing over my garden. It was intimated, as a 
matter of course, that things wouldn't grow, 
couldn't grow, ought not to grow, unless it be 
in an orthodox way, and that with them seemed 
to mean their way. 

But when, fluttering with apprehension, I 
hastened out among the vegetable heretics, I 
usually enjoyed the most agreeable surprises. 
Everything had developed wonderfully in my 
absence, and plants, that did not seem to grow 
at all when daily watched, had in the interval, 
like little tow-headed urchins, not seen for a 
year or more, taken a palpable step toward ro- 
bust maturity. 

The fact is, vegetables are no respecters of 
persons, and acknowledge no hereditary, horti- 
cultural, or hypercritical rights vested in privi- 
leged classes. 

Then there is another favored class, who justly 
boast of their shrewdness. The world finds out 



WILL YOU WALK INTO MY GARDEN ? II 

that they are smart. That is the word. They 
have New England " faculty," and do every- 
thing by a sort of sleight-of-hand that is almost 
as surprising as a juggler's marvels. They are 
as quick and sharp at a bargain as a steel trap. 
Even while you are gingerly feeling them, and 
considering the matter in the most circumspect 
manner, as you think, you are caught before 
you know it. They are people who do not 
need capital. They invest their wits, and usu- 
ally get the Dutchman's " von per shent." 
Their eyes are natural microscopes, and see 
chances and openings that arc blank walls to 
ordinary mortals. Now, I have no doubt that 
there is a scope for this kind of shrewdness in 
the garden, although Dame Nature is a very 
matter-of-fact old lady, and not to be imposed 
upon. Unless her rules and moods arc com- 
phed with, "we waste our sweetness on the 
desert air." It is astonishiuL: what credulous 



12 WILL YOU WALK INTO MY GARDEN? 

humanity can be made to do and believe. One 
of your smart men can talk and engineer any 
measure through ; but there is just that per- 
verseness about nature, that if a thing is not 
done exactly right, it is done in vain. If a seed 
is sown too deeply, or out of season, all the 
wisdom in the world may settle that it is right, 
but Nature will prove that it is wrong, and no 
amount of coaxing or sharp practice will help 
matters. 

But, while highly valuing the keen-eyed thrift 
that sees diamonds of opportunity in the sands 
that others plod stolidly over, I must confess 
that I am not a Yankee. My little ventures 
have often netted me a handsome loss, and I 
have again and again seen where I could have 
made a good round sum when it was a little too 
late. 

In brief, I am a humble disciple of Nature. I 
sit at her feet and learn. Instead of striding into 



WILL YOU WALK INTO MY GARDEN? 13 

my garden with a high-sounding theory that a 
score of savans have sat on, thus giving their seal 
and sanction, and with this seeking to daunt the 
good dame, I saunter leisurely around my walks 
(which much resemble cow-paths), and watch 
for sly hints, suggestive nods and beckonings. 
While in this spirit she will often give you a 
glimpse of a secret, as a kindly old lady shows 
to her grandchild the end of a paper parcel pro- 
truding from her capacious pocket. Follow up 
sharply and the treasure is yours. 

Therefore it has seemed to me that what I 
have done any one can do, who is willing to soil 
black clothes and white hands. Of course, there 
are two other conditions. First, land ; second, 
a love, natural or acquired, for its cultivation. 
A back-yard in the city can grow little save 
cats, and the mellowest garden in the world will 
become a tangle of thorns under a man who 
hates and shirks its care. 



14 WILL YOU WALK INTO MY GARDEN? 

But the love of the soil, like the love of chil- 
dren, is a very general instinct, and though our 
artificial life is hostile to both, it will be some 
time yet before the race will betake itself to city 
boarding-houses, where ground is not and chil- 
dren are forbidden. To that class, wLo must 
be ready for the end of the world, since they 
would bring it about, we have not a word to 
say. 

There is still a most respectable audience 
among those who continue a little homesick for 
Eden, and who would gladly go backward and 
approach somewhat to that state when the first 
man " was put into the garden to dress and to 
keep it," and his wife had not meddled with 
things forbidden. 

There are many having land about them like 
uninvested money, bringing in little or nothing ; 
others for whom it is a bad investment, making 
for them a yearly loss ; still more for whom it is 



WILL YOU WALK INTO MY GARDEN? 1 5 

a poor investment, securing but slight and pre- 
carious return. Possibly these pages may sug- 
gest better things. 

There are thousands in cities pining for the 
pure healthful air of the country. There are 
multitudes shut up within tenement-houses and 
brick walls, and paying roundly for their pris- 
ons too, where their children grow up pale and 
sickly, like plants in the shade, poisoned physi- 
cally and morally by the conditions of their life, 
who might have a home on some breezy hill- 
side, that would almost, if not more than pay its 
own way. But I mean to draw no rose-colored 
pictures, nor indulge in misleading generalities. 
By country, I do not mean swamps, or low lands 
where the mosquitoes keep up the old allopathic 
treatment, and bleed a man to a skeleton, and 
then chills and fever step in, and Hnish him by 
shaking his bones loose. I mean land with good 
drainage. Without that, speculators may ro- 



1 6 WILL YOU WALK INTO MY GARDEN? 

mance in vain about the healthfulness of the lo- 
cation, such rare salubrity that people do not 
die, " but dry up and blow away." 

Nor do I mean to intimate that any such 
gardening will answer as was suggested by an 
enthusiastic Western orator, when he quoted : 
" Our prairies are so fertile, that we have only 
to tickle them with a plough and they laugh into 
a harvest." It took a good deal more than 
tickling to make my garden produce $2,000 in 
one summer, I assure you. But I do hope to 
show some that in their idle, weedy fields, and 
neglected gardens, there is an unwrought mine 
of wealth and happiness ; and I do mean to 
prove that what they get will be by the " sweat 
of the face," as God said of the first gardener 
when he commenced breaking in such land as 
ours. (I find the Bible and my garden fit to- 
gether as accurately as an acorn in its cup, how- 
ever "the authorities " may disagree.) But be- 



WILL YOU WALK INTO MY GARDEN? 1 7 

fore my reader is repelled by this condition, let 
him ask his physician what he thinks of a good 
perspiration over the fresh-turned earth. I 
think that the medical gentleman would be ob- 
liged to admit that, like Othello, his occupation 
would be gone if this corrective and tonic were 
generally indulged in. 

I hope the few preceding paragraphs have 
not proved a long and tiresome way of saying 
to the reader " Once upon a time," the brief 
and classic preface of so many stories. I shall 
now proceed to tell mine, to faithfully portray 
my garden as it exists and has existed. I shall 
carry the reader forward with the season. He 
shall see the seed planted, and watch it come 
up and grow into bulky vegetables. My straw- 
berries shall ripen under his eyes, and my vines 
hang their clusters in aggravating proximity to 
his nose. And then he shall go to market with 

them and count the change — and he meantime 
2 



1 8 WILL YOU WALK INTO MY GARDEN? 

in his arm-chair. AU shaU be as clear and gra- 
phic as the play wherein Bottom the weaver ex- 
plained everything, and left little room for the 
imagination. But, however numerous the de- 
fects of the story, it shall be unmarred by one 
— insincerity. It will be a truthful record of 
an actual experience. I shall aim to tell sim- 
ply and naturally how my summer recreation 
was a source of profit in many ways, for the 
$2,000 does not sum up all that I gained, by 
any means. If a little unstrained humor plays 
over these pages, let it be like the sunlight that 
falls upon my garden, now lighting up a homely 
cabbage-patch, now reddening the cheek of the 
patrician strawberry. If some parts are dull, 
remember there are dull, dark days in the gar- 
den, when the ground is bare and nothing but 
plodding work to be done. If, now and then, 
dry spots are found, remember in charity that 
drought is the worst enemy of gardens as 



WILL YOU WALK INTO MY GARDEN? 1 9 

well as books, and if you have seen cherished 
crops shrivel and wither as I have, you would 
not be surprised that a few dead leaves mingle 
with these. If these pages incite a few weary 
brain-workers to that great duty in our hard- 
driving American life — healthful recreation ; if 
to some hollow cheeks and still hollower pockets 
of my beloved brethren of the country pastor- 
ate, I can bring a greater fulness by alluring 
them also into " a garden to dress it and to keep 
it," I shall have plucked from my little shadow 
of the lost Eden the choicest fruit of all. 



II. 

MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 

Although I do not hold with the late la- 
mented Diedrich Knickerbocker, that in writing 
a history it is necessary to go back to the pre- 
Adamic ages and account for everything up to 
the time in question, still, in presenting my gar- 
den to the reader, it is necessary to give some 
account of myself; for, paradoxical as it may 
seem, the material garden is largely a mental 
product. The stony field looks very differently 
now from what it did when I took it six years 
ago, and that difference is due mainly to 
thought. I have planned it before going to 
sleep at night, and laid it out when mastered by 
my old enemy, sick headache, and too misera- 



MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 



ble to think of much else save some favorite 
hobby. I have plotted it during long, monoton- 
ous journeys, and perfected many details be- 
fore spade or plough touched the heavy loam. 
It has been almost my only recreation during a 
country pastorate. 

But a deep abiding liking for any pursuit is 
not the growth of a night. We do not wake up 
as in the fairy tales and find ourselves or every- 
thing around us changed, for it amounts to about 
the same thing. However general may be the 
taste for rural life, a most decided predisposition 
and love of it, as of anything else, must cither 
be inherited or developed by peculiar circum- 
stances. Just those circumstances existed in 
my early home, and still exist, for the dear old 
place is in the main unchanged. 

The same clear little brook murmurs musi- 
cally across the lawn and skirts the garden, im- 
peded here and there by water-cresses, and by 



MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 



mimic dams made by other childish hands than 
mine. The same slumberous sound comes from 
Moodna Creek as it rolls over the " Tumbling 
Dam," scene of many thrilling boyish exploits 
in snaring suckers. On the steep hill behind 
the house still stand the great chestnut-trees, to 
which I raced with the turkeys in crisp October 
dawns, to secure the first downy nuts that the 
night winds had rattled to the ground. Hard 
by are yet growing the butternuts that furnished 
a winter's store to us children and sundry fami- 
lies of red squirrels. In the stony lot the tall 
pine still breathes its sighs night and day, only 
they seem more real and mournful than when 
they fell on my childish ears. The trees in tho 
orchards have lost many of their side-boughs 
during the storms of past years, but they stand 
like aged Christian patriarchs, persisting in well- 
doing though they can no longer bear the fruit 
of their prime There are the large barn and 



MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 



outbuildings, where we searched for stolen nests 
with more zest than fortune-hunters for diamonds 
in the hot African sands. The same grand old 
trees throw their shadows around the roomy- 
country-house, and even the same white rose- 
bush climbs to the window of the room of that 
dear mother, who years ago climbed to where 
the flowers she so fondly loved do not fade. 
In the adjoining beds and through the garden 
still bloom the hardy perennials that her hands 
planted, and every spring and summer they arc 
her fragrant memorials. Oh, how vividly their 
perfume brings back her drooping form as she 
bent over them, and it seems that she has 
breathed part of her sweet pure spirit into 
their poor plant life. If wc would live pleas- 
antly in the recollection of those remaining, let 
not the cold marble in some unvisitcd gravc}-ard 
be our only monuments, but plants, trees, and 
flowers, and then every spring there will be a 



24 MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 

resurrection of our memory which will continue 
green and fragrant for months. 

My mother was an invalid, but so cheerful a 
one that she chose the sunniest room of the 
house as her own, and as boy and youth I never 
remember entering it without seeing flowers 
upon her open Bible. From my earliest recol- 
lection, she was accustom.ed to sit in her garden- 
chair and direct or walk feebly around, and help 
me in the care of what were to her pets and 
friends. Oh, that I could help her now with 
the patience of a man, and atone for the heed- 
lessness and petulance of the boy. 

But the one who has done most to inspire me 
with a fondness and knowledge of gardening, 
is still at the old homestead — a silver-haired 
patriarch of eighty-four, and yet "his eye is 
not dim, nor his natural force abated." 

The large square garden with its flower-bor- 
dered walks daily prove his skill and vigor ; 



MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 25 

and though the gardener turns off the heavier 
work, there are few of its labors he cannot lead 
off in still. Many a happy hour I have worked 
there at his side and under his direction. It 
must be confessed that my experience was not 
altogether thornless, especially when my task 
was among the raspberry and blackberry 
bushes and the day was good for fishing, nor 
always rose-colored when directed to weed a 
rose-border. Volumes of poetry have been 
written about roses, but their bushes in early 
April are desperately prosaic and inclined to 
scratch. 

Our strawberry-bed also was annually in- 
vaded by legions of white clover and sorrel, 
and my back still aches in memory of the boy- 
ish weariness with which I weeded my daily 
stint. But then, on the other hand, there was 
a bright side to the picture. I would win 
gracious smiles from the girls by bringing 



2 6 MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 

them a half-bushel of rose-buds on some fes- 
tival occasion. And even the strawberry-bed, 
that through much of the year I anathematized 
by mild boyish expletives, became the scene 
of a joyous thrill of excitement and exultation, 
as on the last of May we found the first ripe 
berry and bore it in triumph to mother. Oh, 
the wonder she would express. " So early ! 
Why, she thought they were scarcely out of 
blossom yet. She would get better right away, 
now that she had strawberries." We were in 
a mood then to weed strawberry-beds forever. 
What saints we would be if we could only 
keep up our virtuous and exalted states ! But 
I'm afraid I was impatient over and over again 
before the autumn weeding was complete. I 
need not descant on the summer and autumn 
fruits that we indulged in ad libitum, nor the 
luscious melons, revelled in under the shade at 
noon, and jealously, but often vainly, watched 



MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 27 

over by night lest the factory urchins should 
make love to them also. Suffice it to say that 
taking the sweet with the bitter, as ever must 
be done in this world, the sweet predominated, 
and the garden gradually and surely took its 
place in that warm corner of the heart that we 
reserve for the things we love. 

And even now the sweetest play spell of my 
middle age is to go back to the old place with 
its dear memories and associations, and spend a 
few hours with my honored father in the scene 
of boyish labors. I usually find him among 
his flowers and vegetables, armed with his hoc 
and rake, and it ever seems that he has found in 
his garden what Adam lost in his — peace and 
happiness. At the sound of my approaching 
footsteps he pushes back his broad-brimmed 
hat and spectacles, and on recognition greets 
me with a kiss as when I was a little boy, and I 
am at home. 



28 MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 

Sometimes when I am working there with 
him, it seems as if the mystical and eternal 
paradise bordered on that old garden, and we 
might step over into it unawares. 

Then after an hour or two of labor follows 
such a dinner. Benjamin's portion was a mor- 
sel compared with the way my plate is heaped, 
for somehow while there the old boyish appetite 
comes back, and enough is made way with to 
make one a very "blue Presbyterian" on any 
ordinary occasion. 

Then comes a stroll to scenes abounding in 
pleasant memories, or a shady seat in the old 
garden again. 

, Truly our Lord called heaven by a sweet 
alluring name when He said the "Father's 
house;" and my father's house is to me the 
best type of the home above. 

This then is the good old stock out of which 
my garden grew. When I remember how my 



MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 29 

mother, through years of pain and weakness, 
found sweet solace and unfailing enjoyment in 
her flowers ; when I see my father at an age 
when to most life is a burden, entering upon the 
new campaign of the season with all the zest of 
youth, I feel assured that here is a pleasure that 
will not satiate and pall upon the taste. And 
this conviction has been confirmed by much 
observation. With few exceptions, the mellow 
and agreeable ladies of my acquaintance are 
fond of the culture of flowers. When I see a 
window green with plants, or a porch interlaced 
with vines and flanked by fiowcr-beds, I am 
satisfied that there is nothing acid or sharp- 
set about the lady of the house, and that she 
sweetens her domestic circle like the lump 
of sugar that the old Dutch dames suspended 
over their tables for their guests or family 
to nibble at while they sipped the then rare 
beverage of tea. Men whose hobbies arc 



30 MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 

among their trees or gardens seem to grow 
perennial themselves. 

Adjoining my father's place, on what was a 
barren hillside, stands a noble orchard planted 
years ago by an old Quaker gentleman, whose 
memory is still honored in that neighborhood. 
Some, wise after the fashion of this world, 
laughed at the gray-headed man as they passed, 
and shouted from the roadside : 

" You will never eat the fruit of those trees, 
Mr. S ." 

" Others will, then," quietly answered the 
good, benevolent man. 

But, bless you, he did eat their fruit year 
after year, and, for all we know, his life was 
lengthened out that he might. And others 
have eaten them too. Not only have three 
generations of his own family enjoyed them, but 
a half-dozen families in the vicinity have man- 



MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 3 1 

aged to supply themselves, by hook and by 
crook, mainly by the former. 

He was a kind, genial old gentleman, who 
had a young heart, and planted better fruit than 
pippins. It was his delight to visit schools and 
speak to the young. I can see him now as I 
remember him when I sat on the front bench 
among the little boys. His benevolent, placid 
face was shaded by curling silver locks, and as 
he stood before us in his plain garb leaning on 
his gold-headed cane, the rudest and most mis- 
chievous urchin was subdued into a sort of 
sympathetic respect. I think that he will eat 
some of the fruit of such plantings in heaven. 

The worldly-wise are a shallow, short-sighted 
set after all. 

"But what has all this to do with the gar- 
den ? " growls some critical reader. 

Every one of any agricultural experience will 
tell you that almost all vegetables and fruits 



32 MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 

are inclined to " sport," digress. Strawberries 
and string-beans are by no means always logical 
and consecutive, and as I draw the inspiration 
of these pages from Nature, lay the blame where 
it belongs. 

But I will immediately step back into the line 
of succession — the only place for a clergyman, 
according to the view of some. 

Having thus observed that the loving care of 
a garden, even though it consist of only a 
cracked teapot, with a struggling plant, such as 
I have seen under the eaves of a tall tenement- 
house, is so conducive to health and happiness, 
and beneficial to character, I determined that 
whenever opportunity offered, a garden should 
be a part of my experience. A will usually 
finds a way, and even during the horror of our 
civil war, while chaplain at the Fort Monroe 
hospitals, I had a chance to indulge my bent to 
some good purpose. The surgeon in charge 



MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 



asked me to assume the care of the hospital 
farm adjacent to the wards. The patients did 
the work and renewed their own vigor while 
supplying the means of health to others. One- 
armed heroes could sow seed and weed, though 
they could not dig and hoe. After the usual 
discouragements in getting started, we made a 
fine success, and sent fresh vegetables to the 
patients daily by the four-mule-team load. 

After the war, I was settled over a country 
church, one mile from West Point Military 
Academy, and of course looked around for a 
garden as naturally as a migratory water-fowl 
for water. I know what bird some unsuccessful 
gardeners will think of, but I will prove them 
mistaken. The one, I mean the garden not the 
goose, adjoining the parsonage was little more 
than a sand heap, and very small. In brief, 
quite a come-down from my forty-acre rich Vir- 
ginia farm. There were a vine or two, three 
3 



34 MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 

cherry-trees, a straggling row of common cur- 
rants, and five hills of rhubarb. This was my 
starting point. 

That spring I obtained from my late and truly 
lamented friend, Lindley M. Ferris, Esq., ten 
dwarf pear-trees, and noble fellows they are 
proving. From one, last summer, I picked 
seventy splendid Bartletts. 

Then on a bright day, when a steady south 
breeze was blowing up the river and there was 
a strong flood-tide, I hired a boat and raised the 
lid of a large trunk that I was taking home (the 
old place is home still), and sailed up the Hudson 
in gallant style, with a craft rigged as one surely 
never was before. 

I soon reached my father's place on Newburgh 
bay, and there made such a raid as only an old 
cavalryman can understand. Having loaded my 
boat with rich and varied spoils of flowers and 
fruits, I returned, and the results of that expe- 



MY GARDEN ACCOUNTED FOR. 35 

dition are growing more luscious and abundant 
every year. I had now the nucleus of a garden, 
and my children could form the associations and 
acquire the tastes that I had found so pleasant 
and useful. A sand heap is the place where 
they are first initiated into its mysteries. Here 
they plant about everything they can lay their 
hands on, and often half bury themselves. In- 
numerable egg-shells have been carefully cov- 
ered up, in the delusive hope that little chickens 
would sprout. But have not experienced gar- 
deners sown many high-priced seeds as vainly? 
Still the credulous little planters are coming on, 
and this summer the eldest shall have a flower- 
bed all to herself, with real geraniums and pan- 
sies in it, and the very thought will make her 
eyes sparkle at any time. 

I joy to see this budding taste in them and every 
one, for I believe that the love of the garden hero 
helps prepare us to be with Him in Paradise. 



III. 

MY GARDEN — ITS LOCATION. 

If I could search the country over, I could, 
perhaps, find few gardens with a finer prospect. 
It is in the centre of the Switzerland of Amer- 
ica — the Highlands of the Hudson ; and it 
slopes nearly to the rocky precipitous bluff 
overhanging the west shore of the river. On 
every side there is varied and striking scenery, 
a happy combination of civilization and the 
wilderness. Immediately along the river bank 
are fine cultivated places, the rural homes of 
people who are surrounded by so much beauty 
that they may be tempted never to say, with 
very good grace, " Nunc dimittas,'' etc. A 
mile to the northward is that perfection of mili- 



MY GARDEN ITS LOCATION. 37 

tary posts, West Point, with its smooth, grassy 
plain, bold shores, and commanding positions 
bristling with cannon. The stately academic 
buildings, the substantial quarters with their 
trim gardens, make all the more inviting a pict- 
ure when seen against the sombre background 
where Nature, in her wildest moods, presents 
the rocky cliff, the black ravine, and shadowy 
forest. 

On the bluff adjoining my garden, Cozzens' 
great hotel looms up like a mountain of 
brick. Just beneath, in its cool shadow and 
almost dashed by the spray of Buttermilk Falls, 
stands a new hotel, known as the Parry House. 
Both are patrons of my garden, and are so 
near that the strawberries hardly stop growing 
before they are in the mouths of the guests. 
A little to the north is the village of Highland 
Falls, my market-town. On the outskirts of 
this are neat cottages and roomy summer 



38 MY GARDEN 1X3 LOCATION. 

boarding-houses, where city families, at moder- 
ate prices, can enjoy mountain air and scenery, 
while their children are " done brown " by the 
July sun. 

To the west, and just back of the village, 
rises Bear Mountain and other wooded high- 
lands, abounding in walks, horseback rides, 
magnificent views, and romantic lakes, that 
might furnish occupation to the artist and 
sportsman, and delightful recreation to all not 
enamored by the richer pleasures of the garden. 
On the east, within pistol-shot, the Hudson 
flows grandly by, dotted with white sails, 
musical with the splashing wheels of passing 
steamers, and furnishing a broad, cool avenue 
to my city customers from their hot, dusty 
streets to the airy summer hotels, where my 
strawberries, just picked, are ready for their 
supper. 

We have strong, pure mountain air, and 



MY GARDEN — ITS LOCATION. 39 

yet are so near the coast, that it is happily 
tempered by the sea. It thus meets the needs 
of invahds, and probably does them more good 
than anything else can, save an hour or two 
daily with a hoe or rake over the fresh soil. 

My garden is also a classic region, which is 
fitting, as gardening is highly classical. I can 
sit in the shade of my lima beans, or beneath a 
spreading Kittatinny blackberry bush, eating a 
juicy berry now and then, as thinking is dry 
work, and meditate on the past. There before 
me in the distance rises Fort Putnam, still a 
stately ruin, and there across the river is the 
house where Arnold plotted his treason, and 
there the ravine down which he ran, and the 
little cove from which he embarked in breath- 
less haste on its discovery. The Father of his 
country has been here. He may have stood 
where my garden now is. Hallowed soil ! 
Why should not things grow ? Perhaps this 



40 MY GARDEN ITS LOCATION. 

accounts for my bush-beans so often aspiring to 
be climbers. A high and elevating influence 
still lingers here. 

But, after a sultry July day, when the moon- 
light falls cool and clear on mountain and river, 
that is the witching time for a stroll in my gar- 
den. Then by the weird power of imagination 
(eating Black-caps in the meantime with the 
dew on them to keep up the connection with 
the present) you can conjure up the past. 
There, on the white ramparts of Fort Putnam, 
against the northern sky, you can see a shadowy 
Continental with his matchlock pacing up and 
down in ghostly vigilance ; or the gleaming 
canvas of the passing vessels on the river can 
become to you the phantom sails of the British 
fleet, and the dip of some distant oar that of an 
emissary of the traitorous Arnold. 

If your fancy is of a lighter cast, the fays and 
sprites of Rodman Drake will light down from 



MY GARDEN ITS LOCATION. 4 1 

Cro' Nest yonder, and trip a fairy measure on 
the dewy leaves of the strawberry-bed. 

But blare ! bang ! and the tinkling of fairy 
music is drowned by the sonorous strains of the 
hotel band as they tune up for the German. 
The " fa' o' the fairy feet " will scarcely, we fear, 
apply to the solid thump of some stately dow- 
ager, who now, on her old campaigning-ground, 
feels the influence that stirred her heart years ago. 

The illusion passes, but the Black-caps re- 
main, cool and crisp, and we are comforted. 

The guests at the hotel can look down on my 
garden, and by the aid of a good glass can 
almost see the berries ripening for their suppers. 
From little straws on the current I am satisfied 
that some do look down on the garden in more 
ways than the one indicated. They are not 
above its results, and it is astonishing how many 
berries even the invalids — a large number of the 
ladies profess to be invalids — can consume, but 



42 MY GARDEN ITS LOCATION. 

they regard its care as belonging to the lower 
and common layers of humanity — in brief, to 
those who are not rich. Gardeners, like dress- 
makers, add much to their well-being. They 
are useful creatures, like cows and other neces- 
sary animals. I have had stately beings, whose 
silks might help maintain their equilibrium, say 
to me, with a gracious condescending air, " Ah, 
Mr. Roe, ah, you, ah, raise magnificent straw- 
berries. We enjoy them extremely. Good- 
evening, sir ; " and I am dismissed as the high- 
born dames who could not read, in olden times 
waived off, with a passing comphment, some 
humble poet who had ventured to write a son- 
net in their honor. What higher meed could I 
have than to know that she, robed in a three- 
hundred-dollar silk, had enjoyed the fruit of my 
labors " extremely." But I was so oblivious to 
greatness as to find a check at the hotel-office 
more satisfactory. 



MY GARDEN — ITS LOCATION. 43 

In fact, I have been led to believe that these 
gilded creatures are not aware of Avhat Horace 
and Virgil and a host of other very respectable 
people have said about gardening. Indeed, I 
am not sure that they are acquainted with the 
existence of those two worthy gentlemen 
named. Or they may indulge in the Darwin- 
ian theory, and instead of going back to the 
first gardener for pedigree, hold that they are 
descended from sundry apes and oysters. From 
the mental, moral, and physical developments 
sometimes manifested, I should be at a loss to 
dispute their claims. 

But while the above is true of many, the re- 
verse is true of more, and I am fortunate in the 
location of my garden at a summer resort, for 
it often brings me in contact with charming 
people, who have spent much of their money in 
the culture of heart and brain, and not alone on 
things that they and their horses must drag 



44 MY GARDEN ITS LOCATION, 

around. Who does not despise the man that 
invariably reminds you of his wealth rather than 
himself? Who can measure the contempt 
which that woman inspires who invariably se- 
cures attention to her dress, while graces of 
character are tardily, if ever, discovered. Such 
big, showy, useless plants are called' weeds in 
the garden. 

But there are wealthy people who are the 
most skilful of alchemists, and refine their 
money into books, pictures, and intelligent 
travel, and thence, by a mystic process, into 
the golden warp and woof of their minds. 
Modest diamonds may sparkle on their persons, 
but richer gems drop from their mouths. More 
truly, they are like the fruits in my garden, 
that from the gross abundance and materiality 
at their roots select with delicate precision 
and exquisite choice that which makes the 
melting raspberry and luscious grape. Such 



MY GARDEN ITS LOCATION. 45 

people do not despise gardening, but rather re- 
gard it as a fine art, and a little tasteful pres- 
ent from its products establishes a true freema- 
sonry at once. Thus, in addition to all other 
uses, your garden teaches you human nature 
and enriches you with friends. 

But how about the prospect when you come 
to the garden itself? What is the lay of the 
land ? It is a wonder that some of it lays still 
at all, for it quite approaches a perpendicular. 
Now, I doubt not but that many of my readers 
have been imagining a smooth, mellow plot, 
sloping gently to the south-east, as all orthodox 
gardens should ; they have seen a rich loamy 
soil that seeds would almost sink into by their 
own weight. They may have been coveting a 
sunny, favored spot where the curse, that 
changed Adam from a gentleman farmer to a 
hard-working man, is suspended, and the only 
trouble being to keep things from growing too 



4.6 MY GARDEN — ITS LOCATION. 

fast and large. I wish they were right, but 
the facts are against them. 

Nearly lialf my garden is down hill toward 
the north, and some of it at an angle that would 
soon bring one to China, if it continued far 
enough. Not a little of it is a high, gravelly 
knoll, on which only certain vegetables that 
are like the people of Vermont, who get along 
anywhere, will grow. Therefore, my garden 
is a sort of agricultural paradox, for though 
it is mainly down hill, it demands decidedly 
up-hill work. Still lying between these two 
northern slopes is a swale of most excellent 
land, and here I have accomplished my chief 
successes. My soil has one great advantage. I 
can get to work on it as soon as the frost is 
out, and even before. I have put in early 
crops where the plough or spade turned up 
frozen lumps of earth that were like small 
boulders. There is no need of impatient 



MY GARDEN ITS LOCATION. 47 

waiting for the ground to dry out. As a 
general thing it does that only too fast. In 
the spring of '71 I had much of my garden 
made in March, for after heavy rains I can 
cultivate my knolls when most gardens are 
in a swampy condition. 

But in times of drought, so frequent of 
late, my ground suffers extremely, and I 
have had blackberries dry to seeds upon the 
vines, beets shrivel into little fibrous, leathery 
knobs, and even the hardy tomato droop and 
faint, ripening fruit that hardly made a mouth- 
ful. The secret of my success lies largely in 
planting my crops so early that the principal 
growth is made, and the ground shaded before 
the drought and heat of summer. Yet, as 
the soil is new, I find that small fruits, 
trees, and vines do finely, whenever the 
season is at all favorable ; and if I start early, 
with liberal stimulus of manure, I can gen- 



48 MY GARDEN ITS LOCATION. 

erally make a good crop of vegetables. Still, 
on my knolls it does not pay to plant such 
kinds as require a moist, loamy soil, and I 
have to use all the care and judgment I can 
to overcome this tendency to excessive dry- 
ness. If I could only irrigate my garden I 
could make it a greater success; but watering 
by hand is too slow and expensive to pay 
on a large scale. I tried it pretty thoroughly 
last summer, but with doubtful success. 

One other fact is decidedly in my favor : 
my garden is so near the river that the air is 
tempered by the large body of water. In 
spring and autumn we are exempt from frosts 
when even a mile or two back they are quite 
severe. I can thus get my plants started 
earlier, and enjoy the proceeds of lima beans, 
tomatoes, etc., later than many near neighbors. 

All things considered, it seems to me that, 
as far as location is concerned, multitudes could 



MY GARDEN — ITS LOCATION. 49 

start in a position as favorable as my own, 
and many, in point of ground and exposure, 
would be much more favorably situated. I 
acknowledge that one of the chief elements of 
success is a good market, and of that I will 
speak in a later chapter. As respects this 
also, I think that some will be more favorably 
situated than myself, and some less so. 



IV. 

MY GARDEN — HOW IT GREW. 

A PERSON with a genuine love of gardening 
is like sorrel, aggressive in his nature. He can- 
not see a nice piece of ground without mentally 
plotting it out, and if he gets a chance he is apt 
to do it in reality. Old King Ahab did a very 
mean thing even for him, and that is saying a 
great deal, when he took Naboth's vineyard ; 
but after all it was only a gardener's instinct 
perverted. It was the most natural thing in the 
world that he should want the good mellow 
piece of ground "which was hard by the 
palace, for a garden of herbs." If woman, who 
got a gardener in trouble before, had not 
stepped in, the whole thing might have ended 



MY GARDEN HOW IT GREW. 5 I 

in a fit of sulks, and the greedy old cormorant 
planted his " yarbs " somewhere else. Not 
that I mean to run any close parallel between 
Ahab and myself, or intimate that my agri- 
cultural domain was increased by such tragic 
means as kings and queens have ever been fond 
of using, but which are not becoming to ordi- 
nary people. The process by which my garden 
expanded from the sandy knoll by the parson- 
age, would not hurt the conscience of a downy 
chicken. But the reader can well understand 
that the latter patch of sand and gravel, mostly 
in deep shade at that, and the yard that I could 
nearly jump across, was to me like a cage to a 
wild bird — a place where it can only flutter, not 
fly. And yet even this small area, left entirely 
to my own care, fared sadly. There were busy 
days when I could touch no garden tool ; but 
just at such times the weeds and grass, ni}- nat- 
ural enemies, saw their opportunity, it would 



52 MY GARDEN HOW IT GREW. 

seem, and made the most of it. Not only 
would they grow with undaunted vigor through 
the noonday heat, when my vegetables were 
wilting, but they made the most rapid night 
marches. In consequence I would, in a few 
days, be perfectly aghast, and work beyond my 
strength to regain lost ground. I found this 
would not answer ; so I employed a worthy 
German, by name of Breakbill, to supplement 
my labors, but soon found that his bill would 
break me, for the provident Teuton naturally 
reasoned that a job in a small garden, like a 
small baby, needed much nursing. Unless he 
used great precaution he would hoe a short row 
through unprofitably quick. I soon found that 
at this rate the market would be the cheapest 
place for vegetables, and those sent from New 
York were scarcely less wilted than such as I 
could raise in my hot sand. 

But the fire burned and smouldered, and 



MY GARDEN — HOW IT GREW. 



must break out somewhere. A little incident, 
about midsummer, added fuel to the flame. I 
had several strawberries of my own, (I think 
there were enough to justify the plural number,) 
during the first season, but after my home ex- 
perience I naturally wanted a few more. So I 
made arrangements with a neighboring gar- 
dener to supply me. We had a small dish once 
for supper, and I took some to the sick a few 
times, and then had my bill. , "Seven dollars 
and a half ! " We might as well indulge in 
rubies by the quart. We all professed that we 
had lost our taste for strawberries. They are 
said to contain much iron and to be a great 
tonic, but those we had seemed impregnated 
with all the precious metals, and to be very de- 
pleting. 

But I was growing a thought, if not straw- 
berries, and it finally fruited in this resolve : I 
will have a larger garden and a gardener, and 



54 MY GARDEN — HOW IT GREW. 

make them pay their own way. Then, while I 
am writing a sermon or making calls, the pestif- 
erous weeds will not steal a march on me. I 
will have a rough and ready lieutenant, who will 
carry on an active campaign unceasingly, with 
hoe and fork, while I often retire to the shade to 
provide the strategy. I find that a good deal 
of strategy is necessary, especially in hot 
weather. 

Now, my Naboth, whose vineyard is hard by 
the parsonage, was a most worthy old gentle- 
man that has proved a friend indeed. So far 
from looking upon him with an evil eye, or 
meditating against him deadly designs, I would 
gladly give him a lease of life for nine hundred 
and ninety-nine years. He lives right on the 
edge of the bluff overhanging the river, and 
from his front piazza has one of the finest 
views in America. Between his house and 
the parsonage lies the coveted field, and 



MY GARDEN — HOW IT GREW. 55 

gradually my garden has crept across it, till 
some good souls, prone to see a dark and tragic 
ending to most events, have intimated that it 
would finally push my kindly landlord over the 
bluff into the river. But though I w-ould like 
two or three more acres to develop my plans and 
theories, as well as fruits and vegetables, I can 
yet assure the reader that with the fate of Ahab 
before my eyes, I am as law-abiding a citizen as 
any in my parish. 

But no tragic means were necessary for the 
gradual extension of my garden from the shaded 
knoll described to its present proportions, for 
my obliging neighbor kindly staked off about 
half an acre, and that was my garden in '6^ . 
Part of this ground w^as an apple orchard, and in 
such dense shade that not even currants would 
mature ; but the majority of it had a very good 
exposure, and has contained some of my best 
land ever since. When I took it the soil was in 



56 MY GARDEN — HOW IT GREW. 

a "tolerably fair condition for corn and potatoes, 
but according to Henderson, and I soon found, 
experience also, in no state for a garden. It 
was very stony, and all the finer and more val- 
uable vegetables made slow growth upon it. 
After it was once ploughed and planted I did 
nothing more with a horse, not having any, but 
all was handiwork. 

From my easy-going, deliberate Teuton I 
went to the other extreme, and obtained a chol- 
eric Dutchman, who was a perfect steam-engine 
at work. But he was touchy as gunpowder, 
and I had to walk around my own garden most 
circumspectly. If he started off rightly he ac- 
complished wonders ; but if wrong, there seemed 
even greater energy ; and how to stop him and 
correct matters without a grand explosion was 
a knotty and delicate problem. He was not a 
gardener by profession, but accustomed to work 
alone at employment devoid of all the little 



MY GARDEN HOW IT GREW. 57 

details that now constantly came up. But we 
jogged along after a fashion till the busy season 
was over, and then a stout, young boy and my- 
self carried forward operations alone. That 
summer I sold from my garden three hundred 
and fifty-five dollars' worth of vegetables and 
fruit. I will refer to expenses in another chap- 
ter, as I scarcely dare speak of them yet. In 
addition, our table was supplied on a very 
different scale from the preceding year. 

I resolved, however, that I would not be tyr- 
annized over in my own garden, and deter- 
mined to be autocrat there myself in the future. 
I was an amateur, and fond of all sorts of experi- 
ments and original methods ; and even when 
having my own way would spoil anything, I 
wanted it spoiled just to suit me, and no words 
about it. The garden, of all places, is the place 
of peace, where the true mystical heart's-ease 
should grow. But there could be no peace in 



58 MY GARDEN — HOW IT GREW. 

my garden unless I had my own way, and 
nobody else his — for a garden, like an aspara- 
gus shoot, requires but one head, and any kind 
of a head is better than a set of scraggly 
branches. I determined to have no professional 
or gunpowder people in my garden another year, 
and if there was any " blowing up " to be done, 
to reserve that privilege to myself. 

I made many blunders, and often worked to 
poor advantage, I planted varieties of vege- 
tables and fruits that were decidedly inferior. In 
not a few instances I utterly lost crops, and oth- 
ers did not pay a tithe of the expense, but all 
the while there was a most profitable growth 
of experience in addition to healthful exercise 
and much enjoyment. My family were no lon- 
ger dependent on New York markets. 

In the spring of '68 little over half an acre 
was added to my garden, I can only give a 
pretty close approximation now, as the old lines 



MY GARDEN HOW IT GREW. 59 

of demarcation are obliterated. Early in March 
the kindly power that presides over gardeners 
sent me a helper somewhat to my taste — an 
intelligent Irishman "just over." His sister 
was one of our " help," and he had a temporary 
situation near. Changes occurring threw him 
out of employment, and soon after he was 
brought to our house in a critical state, from a 
sudden and severe attack of illness. Of course, 
simple humanity required that he should be 
taken care of, and when he got better he com- 
menced doing little things around to show his 
good-will. He was very grateful, willing to be 
told, strong and able to work, though knowing 
next to nothing about the management of a 
garden. "Here's a man," I thought, "who 
will plant lima beans a foot deep, if I tell him 
to ; " and by the time spring fairly opened he 
was my gardener, and is with me still. Ikit he 
plants lima beans now half an inch deep without 



6o MY GARDEN — HOW IT GREW. 

telling, and does not poke them back in the 
ground when they first appear to pop out, as he 
was inclined to do at first. He has become one 
of the solid citizens, with a goodly bank account. 
The young boy to whom I have referred, also 
proved a treasure, and stayed with me till the 
fall of '71- 

I cultivated this season about an acre, and my 
sales rose to seven hundred and sixty-three dol- 
lars and thirty-six cents. 

It began to dawn on me that fruit paid better 
than vegetables, and I steadily increased the 
area given to its cultivation. During that fall 
I invested about one hundred dollars in rasp- 
berry and blackberry plants. If I had waited 
till the following spring I suppose I could have 
bought the same plants for thirty dollars. 

In the spring of '69 my garden reached its 
full dimensions of two and a quarter acres. My 
sales ran up to one thousand three hundred and 



MY GARDEN HOW IT GREW. 6 1 

eighty-two dollars and eighty-four cents. But 
that these figures may not mislead, I am bound 
to confess that expenses thus far fully kept pace. 
I see now that they were larger than they 
need to have been, but will explain farther on. 
Much of my ground was very stony, cold, and 
soddy, and not in sufficiently good heat to pro- 
duce large crops of anything. I put on great 
quantities of green and unrotted manure, but as 
the season proved dry it was almost a detriment, 
and did not improve the land as it would if the 
summer had been moist. Many of my crops 
did not return their cost, and Avere of a kind 
that do not pay in such a garden as mine. 

I kept setting out fruit, though not nearly as 
rapidly as I ought. If I had from the first put 
two-thirds of my ground in strawberries and 
raspberries, and used my fertilizers on them, in- 
stead of sweet corn, peas, and potatoes, my gar- 
den would have told a very much better story. 



62 MY GARDEN HOW IT GREW. 

Undaunted by the summing up of the year's 
results, I went into the campaign of 1870 with 
renewed zest, hoping to make a wide and favor- 
able margin in the debit and credit sides of my 
balance-sheet. 

But the season proved one of unparalleled 
drought in our vicinity, while along the coast 
and about New York showers were abundant. 
New York vegetables were, therefore, fine, and 
our own poor. Berries dried upon the vines. 
Most of my cabbages perished from the club- 
foot, and the results fell short of what I hoped ; 
and yet, under the circumstances, they were 
large, due to the fact that my fruit was coming 
into bearing. 

My sales in '70 reached one thousand four 
hundred and ninety-six dollars and eighty-five 
cents. 

Then dawned '71, in which I had abundant 
reward. Though my fruit had not made the 



MY GARDEN HOW IT GREW. 63 

growth I had hoped on account of the drought, 
still I had a greater breadth in bearing ; the 
season, all things considered, was much more 
favorable. 

The grand total, Dec. 31, was two thousand 
and eleven dollars and sixty-nine cents. 



V. 

MY GARDEN — WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTI- 
VATED, 

My readers will naturally suppose that the 
two and a quarter acres that produced two 
thousand dollars in one summer are not the 
bare, stony field I found it ; nor would they 
be mistaken, A more luxuriant plot of 
ground about June 30th could hardly be 
found. Everything there is in the strength 
of its youth or maturity, and the impres- 
sion of superabundant vitality is given. Rasp- 
berries and blackberries toss their forming and 
ripening fruit high above my head, and the boys 
picking are utterly lost to view, save where 
they mount a box to reach the topmost sprays. 
The bean-poles are no longer gaunt and bare, 



MY GARDEN — WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED, 65 

but slender cones of green. The season is at 
its height, and the withering breath of hot July 
has not shrivelled a leaf. At this season you 
would think there was a great deal in my gar- 
den. 

In the first place there are sixteen large ap- 
ple-trees, and though my garden is a grand 
thing for them, they having improved greatly 
since the ground has been brought into a high 
state of cultivation, their shade is mainly lost 
space. Some of my boys also find more to do 
•under them than where the sun shines. I do 
not know whether all trees would have the same 
efifect, or whether from the first there has been 
some mysterious attraction about the apple- 
tree. Between the fruit on them, though green 
and bitter in its immaturity, and the shade un- 
der them, they have a tempting power that few 
in my garden resist at all times, while sundry 

idle urchins, picked up in the streets and put to 
5 



66 MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 

weeding, are drawn to them with the certainty 
of gravitation ; and the centrifugal force re- 
quired to keep them out among the vegetables 
is nearly as exhaustive as doing the weeding 
one's self. I use the shaded ground however 
for composts, preparing fruits and vegetables for 
market, and have lately occupied quite a por- 
tion of it as a chicken yard. Though the fruit 
belongs to my good landlord, he is very gener- 
ous with it, and I was glad to get the ground 
with so slight a drawback. But no apples have 
entered into my sales. 

In the next place I had three rows of cherry 
currants, ninety-three feet long, and one row of 
forty-eight feet. Besides these there were a 
number of small plants that have since com- 
menced fruiting, and about twenty-five bushes 
of the old common kind. Nearly all are young 
and not very large as yet, and altogether not 
over ninety are bearing, some producing but 



MY GARDEN — WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 67 

a few handfuls. But my journal shows that 
from this modest plantation of currants four 
bushels and four quarts were sold during the 
season, bringing nineteen dollars and thirteen 
cents. In addition we used not a few our- 
selves, and some were given away. The 
most of these bushes were raised from cut- 
tings, the manner of which will be explained 
farther on. Any one who has enjoyed the 
cherry-currant with berries two or three times 
the size of the old common kind, will acknowl- 
edge that they are a beautiful and delicious fruit ; 
yet a bush will take up no more room than a 
full-sized burdock, such as I have seen orna- 
menting many a back-yard, and occasionally 
flaunting in front of some shiftless farmer's 
door ; and it will grow about as easily, as we 
hope to show in the following pages. 

Among my currants I have another old- 
fashioned friend, which, though somewhat 



68 MY GARDEN— WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 

soured and thorny in character, nevertheless 
has its good points, and is well deserving of 
the limited attention it requires. I refer to the 
gooseberry, dear to the memory from the innu- 
merable tarts and pies it furnished for our 
dinner basket in school-days. Its propagation 
and culture are as simple as those of the cur- 
rant ; so men who are without gooseberries are 
without excuse. I have twenty-three bushes, 
and from these two bushels and twenty-two 
quarts were sold for eleven dollars and sixty- 
three cents, and sundry quarts disappeared in 
other ways. 

But even these hardy fruits could not stand 
the severe open winter of '71-2, and the bushes 
were so much injured that there was but little 
more than half a crop of currants, and not 
over half a bushel of gooseberries were picked 
altogether. Thus the receipts in '72 from the 
currants fell off ten dollars and forty-one cents 



MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 69 

from those of the previous season, and the 
gooseberries scarcely returned anything. 

There are fluctuations in the garden as truly 
as in Wall Street, as the following pages "will 
prove. Only in the garden honest industry is 
the trait that success crowns in the long run, 
while in Wall Street, it would seem that a men- 
tal " sleight-of-hand" secures the prize. 

We next pass on to what some Avriter calls 
the " finest fruit God ever made," the straw- 
berry. It is indeed a divine alchemy that can 
transform clay and water into the luscious 
Triomphe de Gand, the sprightly Wilson's 
Seedling, and the aromatic Lenig's White. 
Little wonder that we look anxiously at our 
beds in March and April to see how the plants 
have "wintered." With justifiable solicitude 
and joy we watch them throwing up their new 
green foliage in April, and in May becoming 
such a mass of bloom that it would seem a 



70 MY GARDEN — WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 

flurry of snow had passed over the bed. At 
last, when the June rose, "the queen of 
flowers," resumes its sweet dominion over our 
senses, the strawberry stands nearest the throne 
in Nature's realm. 

Passing from the strawberry as a thing of 
" beauty and a joy forever" (I am sure some 
varieties will " flourish" in the " New Earth "), 
to the strawberry as a " crop," may seem to 
some fair readers a letting down, and yet it is 
upon the practical phase that I propose to 
dwell. In '71 I had about five-eighths of an 
acre in bearing, and from this area sold fifty- 
seven bushels and two quarts. In addition 
how many the boys ate in picking, how many 
my own children devoured in their innumerable 
raids, how many were given away, I have no 
means of accurately computing. We also used 
them like water upon our table, fifteen quarts 
finding a home market during one day. 



MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 7 1 

Again, the beds were scattered all over the 
garden, and in looking after this, and strolling 
around it, I had to pass them continually ; and 
surely the gloomiest ascetic could not resist 
their alluring red cheeks, as half-hidden, like 
coy beauties, they peeped out from the partial 
shade of the leaves. If all eaten during the 
season in this promiscuous manner were placed 
in one pile, I fear my friends would regard 
me with something of the same wonder that 
Goldsmith's rustics had for their pedagogue's 
head. 

The birds, too, proved arrant thieves. From 
the sedate robins and demure little wrens to 
the saucy cedar-birds, with their jaunty red 
topknots, it was all the same. From the time 
the berries reddened, like the Great Reformer, 
they all turned their backs on the " diet of 
worms," and, though their crops were greatly 
increased, my crop was sensibly diminished. 



72 MY GARDEN — WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 

But in memory of certain predatory incursions 
of my own upon strawberry-beds in the past, 
I felt impelled to charity. I believe, also, 
that birds and bugs have certain vested rights 
from Nature that no arbitrary civilization should 
wrest from them. It is only when they take 
more than their share that we should commence 
"proceedings " against them. 

But with all these abstractions and without 
reckoning what was consumed in the miscella- 
neous ways mentioned, the above-named quan- 
tity sold for the good round sum of five hun- 
dred and eighty-nine dollars and sixty-five cents. 

The next fruit in the order of ripening be- 
longs to the raspberry family, and is familiarly 
known as the Blackcap. I have cultivated with 
success three varieties : the Davidson's Thorn- 
less, the Mammoth Cluster, and the Doolittle, 
and find the Doolittles do the most of any of 
them. 



MY GARDEN — WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 73 

These berries are simply improvements of the 
wild Blackcap of the woods, and I have seen 
growing in damp and favored spots as fine fruit 
as any borne by my cultivated varieties. With 
those who pride themselves on the pearl of their 
teeth and the coral of their lips, the Blackcap 
will never be a favorite ; but to us plain people 
it has been an old friend from the time its pur- 
ple blood smeared our faces, clothes, and din- 
ner-baskets, and its brambles added largely to 
the v/eekly mending. 

The Davidson's Thornless is a variety free 
from sharp spines, and its fruit ripens a week 
earlier than that of the Doolittle, and therefore 
is deserving of a place in the garden. The 
Mammoth Cluster matures the last of all, so that 
by planting the three varieties named, the sea- 
son of Blackcaps can be extended almost three 
times as long as if onh' one kind were cultivated. 
This extension could be considerably increased 



74 MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 

by a judicious selection of soil and exposure. 
Place the Davidson's Thornless in a warm, sunny- 
spot with a light soil, the Doolittles in the open 
garden, and the Mammoth Cluster in a cool, 
moist, and somewhat shaded position, and the 
canny cultivator has Blackcaps for a month, in- 
stead of merely little over a week, by the growth 
of only one variety. 

I had in bearing in '71, one row of the Thorn- 
less, one hundred and eighty feet long ; three 
rows of the Doolittles, one hundred and eighty- 
five feet long ; and two rows of the Mammoth 
Clusters, one hundred and seventy-six feet 
long ; also a row of one hundred feet of the 
wild Blackcaps of the Avoods, which I have 
since dug up and thrown away. There were 
also some bushes of the Seneca and Miami 
varieties, which not doing very well Avith me, 
shared the same fate. From these seven rows 
and a few scattered bushes besides, fourteen 



MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 75 

bushels and twenty-three quarts were sold for 
the sum of one hundred and eight dollars and 
forty-seven cents. There was also the same 
unstinted use of them for preserving and the 
table in the family, and the same promiscuous 
filling of mouths at all times and seasons ; for 
who, brought up in the country, could pass a 
Blackcap bush, purple with fruit, and keep his 
hands in his pockets ? 



VI. 

MY GARDEN — WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTI- 
VATED — CONTINUED. 

We next come to the delicate raspberries that 
melt on your tongue like a snowflake ; picked 
in hot July with the cool morning dew upon 
them, what could be as refreshing ? The old 
heathen knew enough to cultivate them fourteen 
centuries ago, while now many a Christian farmer 
"can't bother with them," and regales his wife 
and daughters mainly on corn, potatoes, and pork. 
With very many in the country these delicious 
small fruits are as neglected as the means of grace. 
Man is a queer animal to boast of reason ; for, go 
the world over, God's best gifts are generally the 
most slighted. There is not a farmer but might 



MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 77 

have a bowl of raspberries and milk for break- 
fast every day in July. There is not a family 
controlling twelve square feet of ground but 
could grace their tea-table with the chief deli- 
cacy of the season. People who often make 
long expeditions through the fields, trampling 
down their neighbors' grass and grain, to obtain 
a few quarts of inferior fruit, might have an 
abundant daily supply within twenty feet of the 
kitchen-door. The ladies should take the mat- 
ter of small fruits in hand themselves. With a 
tithe of the attention they give to their back 
hair, they could secure from husbands, and those 
who might become such, quite as much admira- 
tion, by placing before the lordly animal a dish 
that might even tempt a spirit of the air. (Met- 
aphysicians have found the heart and stomach 
nearer together than the physiologists.) For 
the encouragement of those who nurse a gera- 
nium or monthly rose through the season, it can 



78 MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 

be stated that a few hills of hardy raspberries 
would not require half the care. 

My plantation consisted of two rows, one 
hundred and thirteen feet long, of white and 
red, that by some mistake got mixed when 
first set out ; four rows of White Antwerp, 
ninety-two feet long ; two rows of Clark rasp- 
berry, two hundred and twenty feet in length ; 
five rows of the same, of one hundred and 
eighty-one feet ; and one of ninety feet. Of 
the Philadelphia variety I have three rows of 
two hundred and twenty feet and two of one 
hundred and eighty-four feet. In addition, there 
were four rows of the Franconia, one hundred 
and twenty-five feet long, and four of the Hud- 
son River Antwerp of the same length. The 
plants of the two last-named varieties were 
young, and not in full bearing. There were 
also quite a large number of scattered bushes 
of the old purple cane variety, but most of 



MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 79 

these I had swept away. The fruit is so 
small, soft, and liable to drop off, that it is 
scarcely profitable. 

From the plants above named I sold thirty- 
six bushels and nineteen quarts, receiving three 
hundred and forty-three dollars and eighty-two 
cents. 

In addition to preserving and using them ad 
libitum, as with the other fruits, very many 
dropped from the vines and were lost. During 
the height of the season they ripened so rapidly 
that it seemed impossible to keep up with them ; 
and after some of the intensely hot nights and 
days in July, every bush would be red with the 
ripe fruit ; and then, before they could be picked 
in many instances, the ground would be red also, 
and I usually noticed that the mouths of the 
pickers were redder still. But I have learned 
to go on the principle that a boy must get his 
own basket full before he will zealoush' bc^in to 



8o MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED, 

fill mine, and this well-established fact must en- 
ter into the grower's calculations. 

During the year '72, the receipts from the 
Blackcaps and red raspberries were not kept 
separate, and I can only give the aggregate of 
both, which was fifty-four bushels and seven 
quarts, selling for five hundred and seven dol- 
lars, this being a slight advance on the previous 
year. 

The last small fruit of the summer I consider 
a truly noble one. 

If I have a weakness for anything that comes 
out of the garden, it is the Kittatinny black- 
berry, when fully ripe. The majority in our 
cities hardly know the real taste of this fruit 
for two reasons. First, the berry is black be- 
fore it is ripe, and is picked a day in advance of 
its true perfection ; and in the second, if it is to 
be sent any distance, it is too soft in its fully 
matured state to bear carriasre. 



UY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 8 1 

"No, sir; I do not like blackberries, with 
their hard bitter core," said a city lady to me 
very decidedly. She would hardly like a 
winter pippin in October. But a Kittatinny 
or a Lawton blackberry fully ripe will dis- 
solve in one's mouth like so much syllabub ; 
and to the majority it is the most wholesome 
of fruits. 

In our latitude it is very uncertain, being like 
many people who develop wonderfully under 
encouraging warmth, but cannot endure cold- 
ness. 

From the abundance and stockiness of the 

branching canes you felicitate yourself on the 

marvellous crop the following season ; but when 

spring comes you may find them hard and dry 

enough for pea-brush, requiring a double padded 

buckskin glove to handle them. If they could 

only be laid down, buried, and thus protected 

like the raspberry, I think it would pay in some 
G 



82 MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 

localities ; but all the varieties I have seen, ex- 
cept the Wilson, grow as stout and stocky as 
young oaks, and will bend as easily. 

My plantation consisted of three rows of 
Kittatinny one hundred and fifty feet long, two 
rows one hundred and seventy-five feet long, 
and one row of two hundred and fifty-eight 
feet. I also had two rows of the Lawtons one 
hundred and sixteen feet long, and five rows of 
the Wilson variety one hundred and seventy- 
five feet in length, and a few additional 
bushes along the garden fence. The vines 
were young and not in full bearing, and yet 
my sales amounted to fifteen bushels and 
twenty-six quarts, realizing one hundred and 
fifty-two dollars and eight cents. At the same 
time there was a magnificent growth of canes 
for bearing in '72, justifying the anticipation of 
double the crop named. But we had no snow 
of any consequence in the winter of ''Ji-2, and 



MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 83 



March, the most trying month of the year in 
the garden, was unusually severe and late, so 
that the vines without any protection nearly 
all died. Twenty-seven quarts, selling for 
eight dollars and thirty cents, were the meagre 
results. In a small garden and for famJly use it 
certainly would pay to protect the canes in the 
winter, and farther on we hope to discuss this 
matter more fully. With the Wilson variety 
there would be no great difficulty in doing this, 
if, as with me, it always grows in a slender, trail- 
ing fashion. 

The remaining fruit of my garden from which 
I reaped an income in '71 is the historical and 
poetical product of the vine — better, I am 
obliged to confess, in poetry and history, than 
in reality with me. In our soil and latitude the 
raising of first-class grapes is a fine art to which 
I have not attained. And yet I believe it can 
be done — indeed it has been done, as Mr. 



04 MY GARDEN — WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 

Rickets, of Newburgh, Mr. Ferris, of Pough- 
keepsie, and others prove annually. And a 
very small city lot owned by an eminent physi- 
cian of the first-named town would also make 
an interesting study to many who require a 
several-acre sphere in which to develop their 
incompetency. I should be prejudiced in fa- 
vor of a doctor who could deal so deftly with 
Nature, for however it may be in theology, in 
the garden and sick-room one must not fight 
her. True skill consists in knowing just how to 
further and quicken her impulses in accordance 
with her own moods, or laws, as a philosopher 
would put it. Perhaps there is scarcely a fruit 
in which culture makes so great a difference as 
the grape. Any one can raise vines and leaves, 
but if you are not careful, they are the main crop. 
In no department have I inade so many blun- 
ders as with my grapes ; but if misery loves 
company, I have plenty of it. 



MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 85 



The grape-vine is a patient friend, and, there- 
fore, we neglect it. We can train it when con- 
venient after October, so we delay and put it off 
till spring, and then every cut becomes a bleed- 
ing wound. It is nearly hardy, and many 
varieties will usually endure exposure, so we 
delay covering till the edge of winter, or risk 
them above ground altogether. I did this in 
'71, and scarcely had five pounds of fruit in 
consec^uence the next season, when I ought to 
have had five hundred or a thousand. Then in 
the spring we can tie them up any time ; and in 
the press of other things and the general spirit of 
procrastination in which we like to put off ever}'- 
thing, even preparing for Paradise till it is almost 
too late, wc leave them till the buds arc no longer 
little hard knobs, but incipient branches that 
will drop off even if }'ou touch them as one 
would a baby's check. I would like to sec the 
man of superhuman patience who could finish, 



60 MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 

in an equable frame of mind, the tying up of a 
long, scraggly vine about the first of May. 
How the branches twist around and tangle 
themselves up ! How they fall out of hand and 
strike every possible thing on their way to the 
ground ! How his fingers seem all thumbs, 
while with many contortions of face in his anx- 
iety and excessive care he tries to tie a lofty 
spray so as not to knock off a prominent bud, 
but in the meantime, with his elbows, does the 
business for a half dozen others unseen ! And 
how at last the ground is sprinkled with little 
purple germs, each representing two or three 
clusters that might have ripened in the autumn. 
Well may he sigh with Whittier, " It might have 
been ! " Premising that the vine was his own, 
the amateur who could look serene through such 
an experience would be ready for translation at 
once, providing he had not neglected his other 
duties as he Had the tying his vines in season. 



MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 87 

On some occasions like the above, I am satisfied 
that the expression on my face might well ren- 
der sour such grapes as grew on the few buds 
left. 

Then the culture of grapes is one of the most 
remarkable instances where man's avarice over- 
reaches itself. 

" What ! cut that splendid branch of new wood 
way in there ? " asks the novice in dismay. 
" Leave only two or three buds ! That seems 
like throwing away pounds of fruit." 

Yes, it "seems;" but your experienced 
grower cuts as remorselessly as a veteran army 
surgeon. And yet I am told that professional 
gardeners are so conscious of this weakness in 
regard to their own vines, that sometimes they 
will send for another of the fraternity to do the 
annual pruning, knowing that the hand of a 
stranger will be directed by science, unswa}X'd 
by interest or affection ; and in the costly green - 



88 MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 

house it is no trifling matter how the vines are 
trimmed. (Reflection : I suppose it is on this 
principle that surgeons and physicians do not 
hke to practise in their own famihes.) 

The great majority of us leave one or more 
buds too many on every branch, meaning to do 
some rigorous spring and summer pruning. 
Where the buds start too thickly we will rub 
some off, not promiscuously, by late tying, but 
with great judgment. And when the forming 
clusters are little furzy blossoms of exquisite 
perfume, we can go through them on June even- 
ings, and cut out all save the most promising 
canes. Yes, we can, but do we always in time? 
Though such a task is the very poetry of gar- 
dening, the Eden phase in which we have only 
to check Nature's too exuberant cfibrts in our 
behalf, still the tangled and matted mass of 
vines and smothered fruit that I have seen in 
other gardens as well as my own indicate the 



MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 89 

fatal neglect. In the average garden, procrasti- 
nation, that Ave all preach against and nearly all 
practise, is one of the most common sources of 
ill-success. 

But if a man will study grape-vines and learn 
grape-vines, he can do some very beautiful 
things with them, and by attention and outlay 
can do it on a large scale. Still, as I have said, 
it is a fine art requiring no little skill, judgment, 
and thought. A nice balance must be kept 
between root and vine. You must feed your 
vine in view of what you wish to produce. It 
must be pruned with a forethought looking 
through several summers instead of only one ; 
otherwise you soon have long reaches of barren 
old wood, with a few clusters at the end, like 
some dry sermons finishing off with a good 
practical application. 

You must see that those in your employ, 
economical of time and cord, do not tic them 



90 MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 

all up in a bunch, as mine once were. On such 
matters I can give a few crude hints, but when 
it comes to the niceties of hybridization, etc., 
such as my medical friend practises in moments 
of leisure, I have nothing to say. 

If any have been beguiled into sitting at my 
feet as disciples in expectation of the inner 
mysteries, they had better move on. The ora- 
cle is dumb. 

In time I hope to raise grapes that "au- 
thorities " will press approvingly between their 
critical lips at a horticultural exhibition. In 
the meantime I am growing such as people 
who cannot get better are willing to eat and 
pay for. My sales in '71 were three hundred 
and twenty pounds, realizing thirty-seven dol- 
lars and ninety-four cents. 

It should be added that, though as a family 
we were not great producers of the classical 
fruit, we were all great consumers. It seemed 



MY GARDEN — WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 9 1 

also as if the beasts of the field and fowls of the 
air — things above, on, and under the earth — all 
conspired to deplete my vines. I do not think 
over half the crop was sold. It was well that 
everything and everybody made the most of it, 
for scarcely a cluster did we get in '72. The 
vines were not protected, and the severe open 
winter turned even the Concords into dry sticks. 
But a good growth was made for '73, and I 
hope this year to catch up with '71. Some 
may regard this as crab-like progress. 

My pear-trees are young and few, yet in 
bearing. But the past three seasons we have 
had some splendid fellows to put away on 
shelves to ripen for state occasions. 

I have quite a number of peach-trees, nearly 
all natural fruit, that is, grown directly from the 
pit without the budding in of some approved 
variety. In '71 ^ ^^^^ of the trees commenced 
bearing, but last year many of them bore fuiely. 



92 MY GARDEN — WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 

Some of the seedlings produced unusually fine 
peaches ; but partly from neglect and partly 
from avarice, I permitted them to overbear. 
Another year I shall believe in the paradox, 
that when the trees are loaded, if you will pick 
off two-thirds of the green ones when large as 
hickory-nuts, you will have more fruit. More- 
over, the hornets, wasps, and yellow-jackets got 
nearly half the crop. As soon as a peach 
begins to mellow on one cheek they puncture it 
and appropriate the best part, leaving the 
remainder to speedy decay. From the time of 
raspberries forward I hardly know how to deal 
with these little stern-armed pirates. When 
you approach they leave you in miserable 
uncertainty whether they will fight or fly, and 
most of us Avould rather endure the stings of 
conscience than their envenomed attacks. I 
have hit on one means of fighting them that is 
doubly " sweet," since it is composed of molas- 



MY GARDEN WHAT FRUITS WERE CULTIVATED. 93 

ses and water, and gives you "revenge." I 
fill a smooth china bowl with the liquid and put 
it under the trees and vines. They get in, but 
cant get out, and, like the " dying swan," they 
hum themselves to death. Or to indulge in 
another allusion suitable to their just, but un- 
happy fate, they die on the same general prin- 
ciple that Mirabeau preferred, when he said, 
" Intoxicate me with perfume; let me die with 
the sound of music." 

Exit wasp, hornet, yellow-jacket — and my 
chapter. 



VII. 

MARKETS. 

The heading of this chapter suggests to the 
reader a question of no shght importance : 
"Suppose that I raise all and more than you 
do, (and there would be no difficulty in doing 
this,) what shall I do with it ? " One of the first 
things I learned at Sabbath-school was, that it 
is easier to ask questions than to answer them. 
I admit at once that this query as to a market 
must enter into it and modify all garden plans. 
In the main it is a question which each one who 
possesses or contemplates a garden must answer 
for himself It is one of the points on which 
judgment, native shrewdness, and especially a 
knowledge of what is in demand, must be exer- 



MARKETS. 95 



cised. The merchant would be regarded as 
very ignorant, to say the least, who should lay 
in a large stock that he could not sell ; and the 
agriculturist is equally lacking who plants his 
land with that for which there is little or no re- 
quest. 

Having learned what is reasonably sure of a 
prompt sale, judgment must be used in respect 
to what crops shall be grown, and how much of 
each ; for there is usually quite a varied choice 
permitted to the grower. 

Again, a little shrewdness in the introduction 
of a new thing will often create a market. 

This is speaking generally. In the following 
remarks I will try to be as specific as I can, and 
to give the character of my own market. And 
yet it is mainly on general principles that one 
must speak, for this question of a market is so 
modified by local circumstances, that nothing 
said of one place will exactly apply to another. 



96 MARKETS. 



It must be remembered that these articles are 
written from the stand-point of a professional 
man, and chiefly for those who propose to make 
the garden a mere adjunct to some other call- 
ing. As my title suggests, I hope to show many 
who have and many who have not a garden, 
how they also might find "play and profit" in 
one. 

I will touch but briefly on the great markets 
of New York and similar large cities. Mr. 
Henderson, in his well-known book, has clearly 
presented the nature of vegetable gardening and 
its rewards. It is shown to be extremely profit- 
able to those who understand it, set about it 
under the right conditions, and devote their 
whole energies to it. At the same time, unless 
one chooses it as a calling, it is a phase of agri- 
culture impossible for a professional man. One 
must be within three or four miles of the mar- 
ket, and land is so high, competition so keen, 



MARKETS. 97 



that success requires all the skill and energy of 
the most absorbed and driving business man. 
In the South a professional man having land 
near some line of quick transportation north, 
might often ship vegetables to great advantage. 
Judging from the price that early produce brings 
here, it ought to pay them abundantly. 

But the fruit market of a large city is a very 
different affair. This can be supplied from a 
distance, and generally at a fair profit to the 
producer. Multitudes are securing a good 
livelihood in this business, and not a few are 
amassing fortunes. There is nothing to pre- 
vent the merchant or professional man from 
sharing in these profits. Say one has an acre 
or more around his country home, and has a 
little taste and time for gardening. It is no 
great task to put out fruit-trees and vines ; and 
a Bartlett pear or golden pippin will thri\-c in 

some neglected corner where before only weeds 
7 



MARKETS. 



were rampant. As we have said, a cherry-cur- 
rant bush will grow where a burdock may have 
flourished, and as readily. If one is not artistic 
and particular as to appearances, he can line his 
fences with currants and fruit-trees, and leave 
the open space for strawberries, raspberries, etc. 
When the owner can give an hour or two a day 
in supervision and labor, it will go a good way 
if judiciously expended. In many families there 
are those who could look after the lighter labors 
of culture and the preparation of fruit for mar- 
ket. The train or boat takes it to town, and 
your commission man sells it and makes returns. 
The carrying forward of all this on a moderate 
scale need not require more than a fraction of a 
man's time, providing he can lind suitable as- 
sistants ; and a sensible man should have no 
more difficulty in finding these for his garden 
than for his store or office. The merchant does 
not give up his store because he has a few in- 



MARKETS. 99 



competent and dishonest clerks ; no more 
should he his garden. In the stocking of his 
place with fruit, a man must use judgment, not 
planting whatever he can first lay his hands on, 
but such kinds as he has found to be in demand, 
and such as are suitable in their habits of 
growth to his own locality. Some of his neigh- 
bors, no doubt, are raising and selling fruit ; let 
him learn from them the varieties that grow the 
thriftiest and sell the readiest. 

In marketing he should not put good, bad, 
and indifferent together in any old baskets or 
boxes that may be lying around, and send it to- 
ward the great city, like a man drawing a bow 
at a venture. Let him go first to the city and 
find a trustworthy commission-house, (the thing 
is possible ! !) or, at least, let him try several, 
and selecting the one with whom he is best sat- 
isfied, then learn from the market just the kinds 
of packages that are most approved. 



MARKETS. 



Thus, after some time ^nd trouble in starting, 
and several dear lessons from experience, there 
is no doubt that the persisting man might not 
only supply his own family, but secure a con- 
siderable addition to his income. In some re- 
spects, I should prefer such a market as I have 
spoken of to any other ; for, while ordinary fruit 
often sells at very low prices, it ahvays can be 
sold, and so got off your hands, while superior 
fruit will invariably brihg a good price and often 
a very large one. Thus your market becomes 
an incentive to produce the best. Moreover, 
after your fruit is picked and shipped, you have 
no more trouble, while a small local market is 
hopelessly glutted, and you have to make great 
exertions to prevent parts of crops from perish- 
ing on your hands. 

But as my experience has been mainly with a 
local market, I will now restrict my discussion 
to this phase of the subject. 



]\IARKETS. 



Under this aspect I would consider the home 
market, such as a man's own table furnishes, as 
first in importance. If a family, in ordinarily- 
good circumstances, kept a separate account of 
the fruit and vegetables bought and used during 
the year, they would doubtless be surprised at 
the sum total. But if they could see the amount 
they could and would consume if they didn't 
have to buy, surprise would be a very mild way 
of putting it. A very small piece of ground 
judiciously cultivated will give a large family a 
large supply, while acres neglected or poorly 
managed will yield little save expense and dis- 
appointment. Premising that the actual or 
possible possessor of a little land and his family 
have a fair average of brains, and are willing to 
use them in Icarninghow to take care of the gar- 
den, just as they would learn to do an}-thing 
else; — then, if they can regularly give a certain 
amount of time to its culture, the work can all, 



MARKETS. 



or at least mainly, be performed without outside 
help, and the saving of money expended in the 
wilted cholera-morbus producing products of 
the market, the gain, in quality and quantity 
enjoyed, and in health and pleasure secured, 
ought to make a sum total that would drive any 
man with a conscience to the furnishing of his 
own home supply. 

Having done this, and still often possessing a 
surplus, the grower may very naturally wish to 
dispose of it. He may be so located as to ren- 
der it impossible to ship to any large market, or 
the amount may be too small to make it worth 
the while. And yet the odd dollars that would 
be secured if the surplus could find a market, 
are a consideration. 

It must be remembered that all this is 
not written for those patricians who sell pills 
and pewter, stocks and justice — in brief, all 
kinds of merchandise, themselves included 



MARKETS. 103 



sometimes, but who are too proud to dispose 
of anything from their country-place ; nor for 
those weakhy, easy-going famihes who consume 
and give away what they can, and leave the 
rest to perish, but rather for such as have long- 
ings for country-life and garden luxuries, which 
can only be gratified by careful economy and 
some financial return ; or for those who, having 
land and needing such return, would only be 
too glad to know how to secure it. If any pro- 
fessional or business men feel that their " cloth " 
will not permit them to enter into any negotia- 
tions with their grocer or butcher for an ex- 
change for the products of the garden, let them 
cherish their cloth. We are writing for those 
whose dignity and reputation do not require 
such careful nursing. 

But through these worthy members of the 
village commonwealth a local market may soon 
be discovered and developed. They can in- 



I04 MARKETS. 

form the grower what articles are in demand," 
and by temptingly displaying at these rural 
centres fruiis and vegetables not ordinarily in 
request, a market can be created for them. 
Such has been my experience ; and perhaps I 
can best suggest to the reader how to deal with 
a local market by describing to them my own. 

My little plantation is situated on the out- 
skirts of a village of about one thousand five 
hundred inhabitants. It contains two markets 
and half a dozen stores, more or less, that 
keep among their multifarious wares what 
some of the country-people call "garden 
sass." Like most places near New York, 
the supply is derived partly from the sur- 
rounding country and partly from Washington 
Market. When I first commenced, my contribu- 
tions were small and precarious, but I have since 
been able to overcrowd our limited market for 
weeks together with certain articles. Some of 



MARKETS. 105 



the stores daily send a wagon to West Point to 
accommodate their customers there, and I have 
had occasional dealings with the West Point 
market. This enlarges my opportunities some- 
what, but beyond the village there was no cer- 
tainty and regularity of demand. The hotels and 
boarding-houses I have supplied with little save 
fruit, and of this phase of my market I will speak 
later. My gardener has made arrangements with 
several neighboring families by which he sup- 
plies them directly with the best and earliest 
products at the best retail prices. These swell 
the aggregate of receipts largely, but when you 
estimate the time required in obtaining and 
filling such small orders, and the interruptions 
they cause in the routine of business, little is 
gained. 

In addition to the regular customers who be- 
come dependent on my factotum, Thomas, for 
part of their daily food, there was a still larger 



Io6 MARKETS. 

class of " occasionals " who appeared all hours 
and seasons, with all kinds of vessels and ve- 
hicles, at the general salesroom, a wide-spread- 
ing apple-tree in the centre of the garden. 
There was no calculating on this class. Some 
days they would come in shoals, and on others 
would not come at all. It seemed that when a 
cool, crisp head of lettuce presented itself to 
their fancy, or the thought of relieving the 
monotony of the day by the sharp biting radish, 
or aromatic, emotional onion, occurred to them, 
they immediately seized upon basket and 
started, and that thus their visits had all the 
irregularity ever known to belong to human im- 
pulses. But Thomas, the head salesman, or 
Charlie, the book-keeper, was either under the 
apple-tree, or not far off, and their sudden long- 
ings were satisfied 

With my limited area of land. Blackcaps and 
raspberries are the only fruits with which I 



MARKETS. 107 

have been able to overstock the market, even 
for a brief time. Nor could it be done with 
these if they would only show a little consid- 
eration in ripening. It may be misery to 
them to be picked, and as " misery loves com- 
pany," they all aim to meet their fate at once. 
Some intensely hot day every berry on your 
bushes will appear ripe. This occurs, too, at 
the very worst time, just after the Fourth of 
July, when people, having spent all their 
money, and satiated themselves with good 
things, have, in consequence, a little touch of 
dyspepsia, cholcra-morbus, or economical re- 
morse. There is a thinning out at the hotels 
and boarding-houses, and a general contrac- 
tion. But in the garden there is a general 
expansion. Berries that were little green 
knobs in the morning are red and ripe in the 
evening, and the bushes suddenly become 
purple and crimson all down the long rows. 



Io8 MARKETS. 



Indeed, they are like the friends of the rich, 
who are most prodigal of favors when most 
unneeded. You can't get them all picked, 
and such a sudden pressure on a dull village 
market is apt to "break it down" utterly, as 
they say in Wall Street. 

At times like these Thomas is in a great 
flutter, and talks "preserves" to his customers 
with such zeal that you would imagine he was 
to have an interest in every jar. He knows 
that those wonderful little combinations of 
sugar and water that cluster so temptingly on 
the vines, if not disposed of in a few hours, 
will disappear and vanish away like the dew 
of a summer morning, and no trace be left in 
pocket or day-book. With strawberries I 
never was able to crowd the market but once, 
and that was through bad management. On 
one day we sold ten bushels ' at the rate of 
thirty cents per quart, and yet the call for 



MARKETS. 109 



them was not by any means satisfied. Indeed, 
I think the world's capacity for strawberries 
has never been fully met ; which is to me a 
proof that the race is not as totally depraved 
as some imagine. Any fruit containing so 
much of Eden could scarcely be so universally 
relished by an utterly fallen race. Some rigid 
divine may object to this view on the ground 
that the majority neglect the culture of the 
strawberry. In reply I would say that they 
do so on the principle that while all wish to go 
to heaven, very many seemingly are unwilling 
to make the effort necessary to get there. I 
may be illogical as to the race, but as to the 
strawberry my meaning is clear. 

In regard to fruit, my chief markets are the 
hotels and boarding-houses in the vicinit}-. 
To these I probably dispose of four-fifths of 
my entire crop. 

If, from any cause, there are a few hundred 



no MARKETS. 



around you who have httle to do save digest, 
it can readily be seen what a market is 
created; Society is growing refined and wise, 
putting upon itself many restraints ; but it 
will digest, whether in pain or pleasure. And 
as a watering-place is one where people come 
to recruit, that is, eat more than ever before, 
it is an advantageous locality for a garden. 

In closing, therefore, it may be said that 
the reader contemplating a local market, 
should, by observation and careful inquiry, 
learn the nature and extent of the local. de- 
mand, and first meet this. Then, in addition, 
he may be able to develop a request for other 
things that he finds can be raised with 
profit. But if these hints are not complied 
with, the sanguine gardener may find at the 
end of the season that he alone has been 
sold. 



VIII. 

EXPENSES. 

This is rather an ugly chapter to look forward 
to. If the reader would only permit me to skip 
this, I am satisfied I could render him desper- 
ately in love with gardening, however naturally 
averse. California, the diamond fields, and 
Wall Street, would lose all attractions. Men in 
haste to be rich would only have to start a gar- 
den, and then with a pencil figure themselves in- 
to a fortune. If the strawberries on fi\'c-eighths 
of an acre sold for five hundred and eight}^-ninc 
dollars, what would the strawberries on five 
acres — fifty acres bring ? The result, on paper, 
almost takes away one's breath. 

" Two thousand from two acres ! " cries a san- 



EXPENSES. 



guine reader. " I have twenty acres, and may, 
therefore, have an income of twenty thousand 
dollars." 

Figure it out on land, my friend, and tell us 
the result. It evidently is not good for us to 
grow rich suddenly ; there are so few honest 
ways of doing it, and gardening certainly is not 
one of them. It is time, perhaps, that this 
chapter on expenses should be put in as ballast. 
One can build chateaux en Espagne at little 
cost over a winter fire, but he cannot put up a 
summer tool-house without a formidable bill. 

Moreover, amateur and inexperienced garden- 
ers are proverbially extravagant, and I have 
proved no exception. In commencing, our 
dealings are with a shrewd, practical class, who 
detect greenness at a glance, and often profit by 
it. Such worthy souls, doubtless, satisfy their 
consciences by the thought that they are selling 
us experience at the same time. The beginner 



EXPENSES. 113 



also knows nothing of the short cuts and sleight- 
of-hand by which a professional often accom- 
plishes wonders. I do not mean tricky prac- 
tices (Nature will not put up with these), but 
those skilful touches which a gardener's genius 
devises ; and, let me assure you, there is as 
much scope for genius and skill in the garden as 
elsewhere. Many a man who can write an epic 
cannot raise strawberries, and takinsz the average 
of epics, I think he who can do the latter is the 
more to be commended and honored. But as I 
went into gardening without genius, skill, or any 
great experience, I lifted by the main strength 
of money a great deal more than was necessary, 
as the following figures will show. 

Moreover, I was able to bestow little over an 
hour a day on the garden. If I had given all 
my time and thought, I could have saved on 
every side. 

During the four years previous I had merely 



114 EXPENSES. 

made the garden pay its way, selling enough 
annually to refund the cost of cultivation. In 
addition, I had an abundant supply for my own 
family, and this I regarded as my profit. Each 
year, if we had bought at village prices all that 
we used, it would have cost us not far from five 
hundred dollars. In brief, we could have af- 
forded no such supply. But when you go to 
market among the dewy vegetable beds and 
vines of your own garden, you return with your 
basket full. 

But in '71, after a larger expenditure than 
will ever be required again on the same ground, 
there was a very nice margin in cash, as well as 
a prodigal supply of the home-market. 

The first item of expense to which I will direct 
attention is that for fertilizers. There is not the 
shadow of a chance for success unless the ground 
is thoroughly enriched and kept so. Here is 
where the majority fail, A man might almost 



EXPENSES. 115 



as well draw a check on a bank in which he has 
made no deposit, as to plant seed and fruit in 
poor ground. Yet multitudes are doing the lat- 
ter every year and growling over the result. 
Nature is very independent, and keeps on the 
even tenor of her way with a sublime indifference 
to those who disregard her laws. It should be 
remembered also that land in very fair condi- 
tion for farm-crops is in no state for a garden. 
The soil must be deepened and thoroughly 
warmed and mellowed by manure. During the 
first year that my garden reached its present lim- 
its, I expended not far from four hundred dol- 
lars, in this way; and in '71 I laid out sixty- 
eight dollars and fifty cents in maintaining the 
necessary degree of fertility. This was not at 
all extravagant, for Mr. Henderson (certainly an 
indisputable authority on such subjects) states 
that the market-gardens around New York re- 
quire from fifty to one hundred tons of barn- 



Il6 EXPENSES. 



yard manure annually ; or if concentrated fertil- 
izers, such as bone-dust, guano, etc., are used, 
they should be harrowed in at the rate of twelve 
hundred to two thousand pounds to the acre. 
But while this is true of land from which two or 
three crops of vegetables are taken during the 
season, it is also true that many kinds of fruit 
would not bear such high stimulating. It seems 
to me that my Clark and Philadelphia raspberry 
and the blackberry vines would grow like "Jack's 
bean " under such treatment. As it is, they are 
prone to make too large a growth. But Ant- 
werps, strawberries, and most vegetables require 
high feeding, and every year the cost of enrich- 
ing the ground must be considerable. In our 
vicinity also we have to pay a good round sum 
for manure — the prices varying from two dollars 
to two and a half per load, and I have paid as 
high as three dollars. For loads I must take 
what is brought, and they have varied in weight 



EXPENSES. 117 

from five hundred to two thousand pounds. 
At first not a few of strawy stufl!" were dehv- 
ered which, when well decayed, the neighbors 
said might make a wheelbarrow full of manure. 
But we have learned wisdom, and such loads are 
now taken to some other market. Thomas keeps 
a sharp eye out and often pounces down on a 
quantity that has good solid weight and sub- 
stance. 

I would advise the reader to economize in 
every possible way, but not to carry it too far 
in the enriching of his ground. If he keeps do- 
mestic animals, and will gather a large quantity 
of leaves every fall, mingling with these the ref- 
use of the house, he can soon have what is 
justly termed the "farmer's bank" at home. 
No gardener can prosper whose crops grow 
w^eak and spindling from poverty of soil. 

My next, and by far the largest item of ex- 
pense, was for labor. I now see that it was 



Il8 EXPENSES. 



much too large. Last year I reduced it consid- 
erably, and hope to lessen it still more the coming 
season. This expense has been nearly doubled 
from the fact that I could not use the plough in 
my garden, and that my entire two acres and a 
quarter had to be dug over and cultivated by 
hand. During the present season I mean to in- 
troduce the plough wherever possible. Here- 
tofore, not having a horse, and often being unable 
to obtain one suitable, I resolved to be indepen- 
dent and put on a force that could do everything 
with the fork and hoe. Moreover, in the grad- 
ual growth of my garden, and under the pecu- 
liar management of an amateur, things have been 
planted crosswise and sidewise, and so mixed 
up generally that it was hard to cultivate one 
crop with a horse without damaging another. 
But I have learned to realize that, apart from the 
great saving of expense, there is nothing equal 
to a plough for the thorough deepening and pul- 



EXPENSES. 119 

verization of the soil. It is almost impossible 
to dig ground full of cobble-stones, as mine is, 
sufficiently deep, and it is wholly so to find a 
man who will do it. But the first dry spell of 
summer will show you the folly of shallow cul- 
tivation. 

Thomas stays with me throughout the year, 
and his wages in '71 amounted to two hundred 
and eighty-nine dollars and twenty-four cents. 
It is true that I could dispense with his services 
three months out of the year, but it would be 
very poor policy to lose a good gardener to 
make this small saving. Charlie, who kept the 
books, looked after the sales, picking of fruit, 
etc., was with me that season five months and a 
half, and he was paid one hundred and forty- 
eight dollars and fifty cents. I also engaged a 
general assistant at one dollar and fifty cents per 
day, and one hundred and fifty-four dollars and 
forty-five cents sum up his receipts. In addi- 



I20 EXPENSES. 



tion, extra labor was employed to the amount of 
one hundred and eighty-two dollars and sixty- 
seven cents during the summer. In the berry 
season boys picked the fruit at one and one-half 
cents per quart, and thirty-four dollars and seven 
cents was the total of their earnings. I also 
paid ten dollars and thirty-nine cents for the use 
of a team, and seven dollars and twenty-five 
cents in an attempt to water my strawberry-beds 
on a large scale during a very serious drought 
in May. I am not sure but I did as much harm 
as good, but of this more anon. I estimate the 
board of help at three hundred and seventeen 
dollars and fifty cents, and thus the total of my 
labor bill amounts to one thousand one hun- 
dred and thirty-eight dollars and seven cents. 

Now I am satisfied that if I could have given 
more time and thought to the garden, and if its 
heavier labors could have been performed with 
a plough, at least four hundred dollars could 



EXPENSES. 



have been saved from this amount. I would 
also add that the bulk of this labor was expended 
on the vegetables that with me make nothing like 
so large a return as fruit. Even where the latter 
is cultivated by hand only, it does not seem with 
me to require anything like the labor of a vege- 
table garden. The strawberries are the most ex- 
acting, but if they were kept rigidly in rows 
they could be managed with comparatively small 
outlay, and raspberries so shade the ground that 
weeds have but little chance. Every kind of 
fruit can be so planted that a plough running be- 
tween them will leave little for hand work, and 
therefore my labor bill is not so discouraging as 
at first it might seem. 

I write with the expectation that the majority 
will greatly improve on my experience. Many 
may not have as good a market as I have had, 
but by more economical cultivation they can se- 
cure as favorable a margin of profit. 



EXPENSES. 



Then my seed bill was no bagatelle. I have 
a weakness for seeds, and every year buy many 
more than are needful. They are such sugges- 
tive things, so full of promise, but, also, like 
many things in this world, so often bringing dis- 
appointment. You sometimes find yourself like 
certain moral reformers who are apparently sow- 
ing considerable good seed, which comes up 
only as weeds ; or like some short-sighted phi- 
losophers who scatter theories that produce a 
very different crop from what they expected. 
When you plant a thought or a seed you can- 
not be perfectly sure what it will develop into. 
But after dealing with R. H. Allen & Co., New 
York, for about nine years, I find that the pros- 
pect of vegetable heretics is very small, and that 
they never try to improve their seed on the 
principle of old wine. And when I receive one 
of Mr. Vick's dainty packages of flower-seeds, 
I have not so much faith and hope as knowledge 



EXPENSES. 123 



of the results. This being true, how can one 
look over their tempting catalogues and deny 
himself the innumerable good dinners suggested, 
or forbear the chance of robbing life of its mon- 
otony by surrounding one's path by all the colors 
of the rainbow. Mr. Vick can insure that every 
breeze through your open windows shall be like 
the " gales of Araby the blest." 

Going into a seed store is like a ramble 
through Dodd & Mead's, Randolph's, or Scrib- 
ner's. The books you take up are so sugges- 
tive of good things and good times. You know 
you cannot read them all, but you look around 
as the gourmand gloats over a sumptuous feast, 
devouring with his eyes that which he sighingly 
acknowledges as far too much for his capacity. 
So the sample boxes and bins of seeds have for 
the amateur gardener a strange fascination. He 
stands over and daintily fingers them ; compares 
one variety with another, wondering at the end- 



124 EXPENSES. 



less differences. Then comes the temptation to 
let Nature develop the diversity still more clearly 
in a little serial story, of which every spring and 
summer morning will give you a new chapter. 
Invite your customers to your stores, and they 
will double their orders ! 

But this does not pay in the market-garden, 
when you are seeking to raise what will yield 
and sell the best ; and the practical man behind 
the counter, knowing your purpose, will say 
significantly, " That is what you want," point- 
ing to some standard variety not half so expen- 
sive or promising as others that may have taken 
your eye. It is a good deal with seeds as peo- 
ple, the most showy and taking at first sight are 
not the best. In both cases the most showy 
are the most costly. But I never could resist 
the " novelties," though some of them turned 
out to be old acquaintances dressed up in new 
names, and more of them prove like many of 



EXPENSES. 125 



the distingue people one meets at a watering- 
place who will not bear investigation. Still I 
expect I shall go on buying costly novelties to 
the end of life. There is an innate passion for 
speculation in human nature, and this is perhaps 
so mild a form of its indulgence as to be permis- 
sible to a minister. 

Then it is well to sow seed thickly, as it 
must run a gauntlet of late frosts, drought, cold 
rains, and bugs innumerable, and it is much 
more profitable to thin out than plant over 
again. My seed bill was fifty-one dollars and 
thirty-five cents, but I am satisfied that thirty 
dollars would have bought all necessary. 

For tools thirty-seven dollars and ninety-five 
cents were expended, but three-fourths of this 
sum went for a large water-barrel on wheels, 
which saves the labor of carrying it by hand to 
the hot-beds and cold frames. Three dollars 
was expended for glass, and seventeen dollars 



126 EXPENSES. 

and fifty cents for one thousand raspberry stakes, 
and forty-one dollars and twenty-one cents for 
crates and berry-baskets. My flowers cost me 
eight dollars and ninety-five cents, and this was 
the" best investment made, though the returns 
do not appear on the cash account. Miscella- 
neous items amount to fifteen dollars and six 
cents, and I paid one hundred dollars rent for 
the land. Summing up all these items of ex- 
pense, we have a total of one thousand four 
hundred and eighty-one dollars and fifty-nine 
cents. 

I also allowed the village merchants fifteen 
per cent, on the retail price when they sold for 
me on commission, and this was not always de- 
ducted when the sales were entered on the day- 
book. Some losses occurred, also, through 
articles becoming stale and unsalable, and by 
arrangement, were charged to me in settlement. 
These, with the commission, I have liberally 



EXPENSES. 127 



estimated at seventy-six dollars and thirty cents, 
which, added to the above amount, makes the 
entire expense of the season one thousand five 
hundred and fifty-seven dollars and eighty-nine 
cents, leaving four hundred and fifty-three dol- 
lars and eighty cents as a margin of profit. 

In addition, there was a most abundant home 
supply of all the good things of the garden 
throughout the year, and in view of this I sum 
up my profits for '71 at one thousand dollars. 



IX. 

GROUND FOR A GARDEN — WHAT KIND 
SHALL I TAKE. 

We would say in general, the best you can 
get, adding, any that you can get rather than 
not have a garden at all. Plants like to grow 
and Nature likes to have them. The most 
unpromising spots have been made quite Eden- 
like, and there is a principle in our nature 
that leads us to enjoy conquering and subdu- 
ing. The civilized state of our society pre- 
vents our doing this on the Caesar and Alex- 
ander plan, and that phase which modern 
belles often push to such extremes, is scarcely 
a manly recreation. But the subduing of a 
wild stony piece of land still affords true scope 



GROUND FOR A GARDEN. 1 29 

for masculine energy, and surely there is a 
keen satisfaction in taking a rough field, a 
tangled thorny thicket, a jumble of rocks and 
stumps, and by the dint of honest toil, like a 
hard-fought battle, changing all into smooth, 
yielding fertility. 

I fear most of my readers are saying that 
it would be a greater satisfaction to find such a 
smooth piece of ground to begin with. Well, 
that is not unwise, considering that the subdu- 
ing process is a very expensive luxuiy. But 
remember that even smooth land with an invit- 
ing surface is not always the best. There is 
just as much difference in the character of 
ground as in that of people, and before enter- 
ing into intimate relations with either, some 
little investigation is necessary. It is said of 
some persons that the more you do for them 
the worse they treat you. There is the same 

grain of truth in this remark when applied to 
9 



130 GROUND FOR A GARDEN. 

certain kinds of land. There are soils justly 
termed "hungry, ungrateful." It is next to 
impossible to make them rich, still more so to 
keep them fertile. Manure goes through them 
like a sieve, or money through a spendthrift's 
hands. Enrich it as you please one season, 
you get little advantage from the outlay the 
following. That which should have given you 
fatness year after year, has vanished, washed 
down by the rains out of sight. It may 
benefit land in China, but has little effect here. 
And yet this sandy, gravelly ground, with a 
leachy subsoil, is very abundant on our Atlan- 
tic coast, and in many districts we can find no 
other. It must be dealt with after its own char- 
acter. We would advise the reader to shun 
such land if possible, but if the fates decree 
that he should cultivate land with a little more 
of the curse on it than some other, the 
following hints may be of use. If the soil is 



GROUND FOR A GARDEN. 13I 

not utterly porous and leacliy, it may be some- 
what permanently improved by the ploughing 
in of green crops, as clover or buckwheat. 
If clay can be obtained at no great distance, 
and at moderate cost, it might pay well on a 
small scale to topdress the garden thoroughly 
and often, with this, thus giving the soil a greater 
consistency and retaining power. Mr. Thomas 
Skene, the accomplished gardener on Gov. 
Fish's estate, which is just across the river from 
us, described to me a very successful experi- 
ment in the use of clay. In the grounds under 
his care, there was a steep hill-side facing 
the south-east. It was so dry, leachy, and 
barren, that nothing would grow, and it was 
impossible to keep a pretty green sod on the 
place. The loose sand and gravel would not 
retain manure long enough for any real benefit. 
Mr. Skene remedied the evil in the following 
simple way : Commencing at the bottom of 



GROUND FOR A GARDEN. 



the hill, he had his men cut a trench two feet 
deep, and in this he put in about six inches of 
clay. Then a strip of soil on the upper side of 
this trench was thrown into it, thus leaving 
another trench, side by side, and of the same 
depth of the first ; and clay was put in this 
also. Thus the whole hill-side was regularly 
trenched over, and an artificial clay subsoil 
that would hold water and prevent manure 
from leaching away, put under the dry bar- 
ren place. The result was most favorable ; 
the grass no longer dies out, but remains 
green and growing throughout the summer. 
But in the main such land is dealt with as we 
do with the shiftless poor, giving a little at a 
time, and making it go as far as possible. In 
the first place, the manures used should contain 
much vegetable matter, and not be light and 
heating in their character. That from the cow 
stable is specially valuable. Decayed leaves, 



GROUND FOR A GARDEN. I 33 

sods, and muck sweetened and pulverized by 
the action of frost, are all excellent. Horse 
manure mixed with these ingredients is far bet- 
ter than if used alone. In either case, the fer- 
tilizer should be thoroughly rotted, so that the 
plants can use it at once. This result can be se- 
cured by preparing the manure one year for the 
next. The heap should be cut down and turned 
two or three times during the season, and if the 
pile consists only of stable manure, much oftener 
to prevent its heating and burning, and if pos- 
sible, the process should be carried forward 
under shelter from the sun and rain. Thus the 
mass becomes well decayed, pulverized, and with 
no heating properties, and so can be directly 
applied in the hill or row with the seed or 
around the plant. In this way you outgeneral 
the leachy soil, for the manure concentrated 
immediately around the plant so stimulates it 
that its growth is made, and the crop secured 



134 GROUND FOR A GARDEN. 

before the spring and summer rains can wash 
the fertilizers away. 

Such land is also greatly improved by mulch- 
ing, that is, by a covering of coarse litter, 
leaves, etc. This keeps the surface moist, 
shields from the special enemy of such a soil, 
drouth, and by its gradual decay keeps up 
a certain degree of fertility. Even when 
using manure broadcast on such land, I have 
found it better to apply it to the surface, for 
then it takes longer to wash through out of sight 
and use. 

Ground of this character has one great 
advantage — it is usually quicker, earlier than 
any other, which is, for a market garden, a 
most important consideration. The moment 
the frost is out you can work it, put in your 
seed, and no amount of wet weather can pre- 
vent the cultivation of the crops. While some 
neighbor may be looking helplessly at his wet 



GROUND FOR A GARDEN. I35 

clay or heavy loam, you are driving spring 
operations with Napoleonic energy. But if 
there comes a drouth in June or July, your 
crops may be standing still or going back, 
while your neighbor's are growing luxuriantly. 
Still, the probabilities are, that you will 
always be earliest in the market, and can 
chuckle over the first green peas of the 
season, though your crops will not be so heavy 
as those on your neighbor's slower but surer 
ground. 

The next soil of which I shall speak is just 
the opposite in character, and not much if at 
all better — a heavy, adhesive clay, and a sub- 
soil that will hold water like india rubber. 
What shall we do with this ? Let it alone if 
you can find any better. But if here again fate 
is against you, and such ground must be cul- 
tivated or none at all, then here, also, skill 
and industry can wring from reluctant Nature 



136 GROUND FOR A GARDEN. 

a fair return. This sour, cold, unyielding soil, 
like a churlish disposition, can be greatly im- 
proved by kindly treatment. It wants mellow- 
ing up as so many people do. Though in both 
cases we like to go into the improving business 
where it can be done readily, and effort goes 
a good ways ; still, when driven to it by con- 
science or necessity, we find much improve- 
ment possible, even under the most adverse 
circumstances. 

In no instance is the old adage more clearly 
verified, "Too much of a good' thing," etc., 
as with the soil in question. Water, moisture, 
is the prime necessity of the garden, but this 
kind of land retains it to such a degree that 
there is always too much on hand. In the 
heat of summer the ground is like a sun-dried 
brick, while its roots are mouldering in a 
sour, soggy soil. The first step is to drain 
off the evil. Too much water in land is like 



GROUND FOR A GARDEN. 137 

selfishness in character. There is no chance for 
real improvement till selfishness is reduced to a 
judicial regard for self-interest ; and the land 
that persists in holding water, instead of giving 
it to the air above and springs below, is past 
praying for. Draining is a prime necessity, 
and the owner must set about it at once, unless 
he would have his garden a scene of disappoint- 
ment and almost wasted labor. If there are 
stones on the land, in no better way can he 
dispose of them than in the formation of drains. 
If the garden so slopes that one drain, five or six 
feet deep, can be cut through near the centre, 
all the better. If the soil is very stiff and wet, 
then side drains, fifteen feet apart, and three 
and a half feet deep, should be dug, leading 
into the main ditch ; but if the subsoil is so 
porous as to give the water some chance to get 
through, then these laterals can be cut twenty- 
five feet apart. The nearness and number of 



138 GROUND FOR A GARDEN. 

drains Is a question of judgment that must be 
decided on the ground ; and if the owner has 
had no experience, it would be wise to call in 
a few neighbors. Strike an average between 
their advice, and you will probably hit on 
the right course. Or, what would be still 
more to the point, if you could find one prac- 
tical man, who has, successfully and econom- 
ically done the work, you had better follow his 
example. 

If there are cobble-stones on your land, then 
the common rubber drain will answer. Throw 
them into the main ditch to the depth of two 
feet, and the depth of eighteen inches in the 
three-and-a-half feet side drains. If the stones 
are flat, they can be carefully laid on each other 
in the bottom of the ditches in such a manner 
that the water will flow readily through. In 
each case the tops of the stones must be thor- 
oughly covered with shavings, straw, or sod 



GROUND FOR A GARDEN. 1 39 

with the grass side down, to prevent the soil 
from washing in and filhng up the space 
through which the water is to flow. 

Tile undoubtedly make the best drains, and 
are probably cheapest in the long run, even 
where stone can be had. But we naturally 
shrink from first cost ; and where stone is plenty, 
its use has the additional advantage of clearing 
the soil. In many places, however, tile must be 
employed, and it does the business thoroughly. 
Mr. Henderson prefers the ordinary horse-shoe 
tile, and he is a safe man to follow. A good 
descent must always be provided for, so that 
the water can flow off" rapidly, and the joints 
of the tile must be covered with sods, the grass 
side down, or with some other material that will 
prevent the soil from washing through the 
slight openings. 

Cheap drains can also be made by treading 
in brush to the depth of two feet and covering 



' T40 GROUND FOR A GARDEN. 

as before described. These will remain effective 
for ten or twelve years, and can be constructed 
on leased land where the lessee is unwilling to 
go to great expense. It would be better though 
to make some arrangement with the landlord, 
by which both could share the cost of thorough 
and lasting work. 

But let no one say, because my land is leased, 
or because I only bought to sell again in a few 
years, it will not pay me to incur the expense of 
drainage. My best argument on this point will 
be to relate an incident told by Mr. Henderson 
in his most excellent work, " Gardening for 
Profit." He says : 

" Every operator in the soil concedes the im- 
portance of drainage, yet it is really astonishing 
to observe how men will work wet lands year 
after year, wasting annually, by loss of crops, 
twice the amount required to thoroughly drain. 
A most industrious German in this vicinity cul- 



GROUND FOR A GARDEN-. 14 1 

tivated about eight acres for three years, barely- 
making a hving ; his soil was an excellent loam, 
but two-thirds of it was so ' spongy ' that he 
could never get it ploughed till all the neighbors 
had their crops planted. Driving past one day 
I hailed him,, asking him why he was so late in 
getting in his crop, when he explained that if 
he had begun sooner his horses would have 
'bogged' so, he might never have got them 
out again. I suggested draining, but he re- 
plied, that would not pay on a leased place ; 
he had started on a leased place which 
had only seven years more to run, and that he 
would only be improving it for his landlord, who 
would allow him nothing for such improvement. 
After some further conversation, I asked him to 
jump into my wagon, and in ten minutes we 
alighted at a market-garden that had six years 
before been just such a swamp hole as his own, 
but now (the middle of May) was luxuriant 



142 GROUND FOR A GARDEN. 

with vegetation. I explained to him what its 
former condition had been, and that the invest- 
ing of five hundred dollars in drain tiles would, 
in twelve months, put his in the same condi- 
tion. He, being a shrewd man, acted on the 
advice, and at the termination of his lease, 
purchased and paid for his eight acres twelve 
thousand dollars, the savings of six years on 
his drained garden. I honestly believe, that, 
had he gone on without draining, he would not 
have made twelve thousand dollars in twelve 
years, far less twelve thousand dollars in six 
years. My friend attributes his whole success 
in life to our accidental meeting and conver- 
sation that May morning, and consequently I 
have no stancher friend on earth than he." 

Thus it will be seen that soils naturally the 
most favorable for gardening purposes, are often 
so wet as to make draining indispensable. 
Where this is the case let the cultivator realize 



GROUND FOR A GARDEN. I 43 

it at once, and waste no time in fighting against 
Nature. When a loamy piece of land or a muck 
swamp can be drained, they make the finest gar- 
den land existing, and the happy, enterprising 
owner can be congratulated upon almost certain 
success ; .for thorough drainage on one hand 
avoids the danger of excessive moisture, and 
the nature of his soil, on the other, enables him 
to defy drouth. 

But if the reader possesses or purchases a 
loamy soil, that is, a natural mixture of sand 
and clay, in such proportions that it turns up 
mellow and friable instead of being sticky and 
full of stumps, and this is underlaid by a yellow 
loam subsoil which permits a natural drainage, 
he may rest satisfied, and commence operations 
with the first conditions of success in his favor. 
For here is land of such consistency and com- 
pactness that it can be thoroughly and per- 
manently enriched. It is what is termed a 



144 GROUND FOR A GARDEN. 

"grateful soil." You can bring it up to any 
degree of fertility, for such portion of the manure 
dug or ploughed in this year, that is not exhaust- 
ed by the growth of crops, remains in the soil 
for use the following season. 

Such land is like a good investment that 
yields its interest every year, and at the same 
time is growing more valuable. Only by over- 
cropping and weed-growing, and by under- 
feeding can such land be impoverished. Yet 
you will often find ground of this character 
utterly run out, poor as the spendthrift sandy 
soils first described, and this because there are 
so many people, who, in accordance with the 
old adage, will " ride a willing horse to death." 
But even wheji so reduced, I would take such a 
soil in preference to any other, in view of its 
grateful character, its saving qualities, so to 
speak, and its readiness to make liberal return 
for liberal treatment. 



GROUND FOR A GARDEN. I 45 

I have also observed that a soil resting on a 
substratum of slate was peculiarly well adapted 
to the growth of fruit. 

Ordinary clay soils, with good drainage, can be 

wonderfully and rapidly improved by the use of 

light stimulating manure, such as the horse 

stable furnishes, and so treated, are second to 

none in their yield. 
10 



X. 

WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. 

" Why, in the spring, of course." 
I beg to differ with you, my reader, fair or 
otherwise. The autumn is the true practical 
spring in which the gardener should commence 
o'perations with the best hopes of success. 
This may seem paradoxical and contrary to 
Nature, and save to the comparatively few who 
have learned by experience, it is at variance 
with practice. But it is not contrary to Nature, 
for in the cool dewy nights, and the rains of 
late August and early September, we have 
again weather suitable for the stirring of the 
ground and the sowing and growth of seeds. 



WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. I47 

Much of the garden can again be profitably 
planted, as we hope to show. 

When autumn winds first commence sighing 
regretfully over the summer season fast depart- 
ing, and the coming of sere winter, there is a 
great falling off of interest in the garden on the 
part of the majority. The spring, with its 
excitement of hope and promise, the summer, 
with its satiety of full return, or its disappoint- 
ment at failure, are nearly past, and the mind is 
turning to other pursuits and novelties. The 
garden is neglected, and mainly because it 
seems to require little attention, and to promise 
little more for the year. The hardy fruits and 
vegetables have got so far along that they will 
mature any way, and not a few who were 
enthusiastic in April, are now, as far as the 
garden is concerned, like much in it, on the 
decline. The number of amateurs who are like 
what the Bible calls stony-ground hearers, is 



148 WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN, 

marvellously large. During hot July their 
interest dries up, exhales, and their gardens go 
to the bad. 

There is also this somewhat mean tendency in 
human nature, that when we have got about all 
out of a person or thing that can be hoped for 
at present, or when persons are so committed, 
like a crop nearly matured, that they will give 
what is expected any way, we are apt to flag in 
our attentions. Here is where the short-sighted 
fail, for neither persons nor gardens will continue 
to commit themselves in our favor under such 
treatment. I have lost bushels of berries, not 
in June, the strawberry month, but in August 
and September, when the beds should have 
been made and cared for. I have lost hundreds 
of dollars, not in April and May, but in the 
autumn, when the seeds of spring crops should 
have been sown, and in the winter, when they 
should have been properly protected. 



WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. 149 

So, then, instead of waiting for spring to com- 
mence the campaign of the year, autumn is the 
time of all others for the provident gardener to 
enter upon the activities that secure success. 
Therefore, the value of gardening as a source of 
recreation or profit, for only about three months 
of the year are you compelled to comparative 
idleness. 

Because in the strawberry-beds there is noth- 
ing but leaves, and among the raspberries only 
thorns seem to be left, do not neglect them. If 
you are to have a crop another year, now is the 
time for action. It is true the melons are on 
the wane, the cucumbers yellow and dying, the 
peas like their brush, and the succulent bush- 
beans going to seed ; but is that a reason for 
giving over these spaces to the dominion of 
weeds, and leaving them unsightly blemishes 
upon the garden ? God had a right to curse the 
ground, but I doubt whether we have. And 



150 WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. 

yet I can assure the reader that one thriftless 
gardener or amateur, whose enthusiasm July has 
withered, can do more cursing or weed-seeding 
than half a generation can eradicate. My con- 
science troubles me not a little in this respect. 
Apart from the profit there should be principle 
in the case. Having put our hands to the 
plough in April, we should not look back in 
August, because many of our crops are gathered 
and the thing is becoming an old story. 

But having more faith in the profit argument 
than any based on principle, we hasten to as- 
sure the reader again, that if he hopes for con- 
tinued crops and considerable cash, he must 
make the most of autumn. 

Not to be invidious, or intimate that any of 
my readers are guilty of such shortcomings, 
we will suppose a place bought of one of the 
unregenerate, and the new and agriculturally 
enlightened owner to be taking possession. 



WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. 151 

Let us go with him, take notes, and watch pro- 
ceedings. He has wisely bought his place in 
midsummer, for then in the matured growth of 
everything he can judge better of the strength 
and nature of the soil. If there is fruit on the 
place, he can best learn its character, value, and 
needs. 

As we pass with him from the desert high- 
road into his promised land, fruitful in great 
hopes and expectation if nothing else, we ob- 
serve that many fruit-trees need pruning, and 
others heading back on account of too rapid 
growth. Some have been planted closely and 
are crowding each other ; others are suffering 
from the shade of apparently worthless trees 
that have grown up around them. On grafted 
fruit, sprouts and boughs have started below 
the graft, and are taking all the strength of the 
root, leaving the good variety to dwindle. For 
it must be remembered that natural and com- 



152 WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN, 

paratively worthless fruit grown from the seed, 
is like the natural man. The wild nature is 
very apt to get the best of the most approved 
foreign importation. Thus in the matter of 
fruit-trees alone there is much to be done before 
winter, and there is no time for such labors in 
the rush of spring work 

As we pass on, we observe that weeds and 
bushes, not content with long possession of the 
fences, are ever encroaching on the open 
ground. Around the house the hardy peren- 
nials and annual bulbs are nearly all past their 
prime, and withering stalks and sprawling 
bushes take the place of their early bloom. It 
is indeed now too late to do much toward en- 
livening this melancholy domain of flowers 
with bright and varied annuals or perpetual 
blooming bedding plants, but it is just the time 
to see their need, and to commence preparing 
for its supply another year. At once there 



WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. 1 53 

is much need . for pruning-knife, stake, and 
twine, that neatness at least may gratify the 
eye. 

But we pass on to the garden. There is 
scope for any amount of energy in remedying 
the past and providing for the future. 

The raspberries and blackberries are done 
bearing, but the producing vines are left, draw- 
ing their useless life from the strength of the 
plants, and taking from the growth of the new 
wood that must produce the following year. 
Leaving these old vines after they have done 
bearing, is like tying a horse after a journey, 
on the side of a hill, where he must stand pull- 
ing to no purpose. They will be cut out at 
once, and not burned, but carried to the com- 
post heap, where, covered with weeds and rub- 
bish they will decay, so that they can be used 
the following season. Rotted, they will be 
worth more than their ashes, and the successful 



154 WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. 

gardener is ever looking keenly after fertilizers. 
The sprawling Black-cap varieties are tied up 
so that the wood may ripen before winter, and 
if new plants are wanted, the tips of the vines 
are slightly covered. 

The strawberry-bed is weedy and matted ; 
indeed, all run together. Yet it is worth 
saving. It is but two years old, and another 
crop may be had from it. So spaces eighteen 
inches wide are cut through it, and v/eeds and 
plants turned deeply under. By this process, 
rows a foot in width are left between the spaces, 
and these must be weeded by hand. Or, if 
the bed is sufficiently extended, the same pro- 
cess can be performed by a plough, a space of 
three feet being turned under, and another of 
plants eighteen inches wide left for fruiting. 
If the bed has become very full of grass or white 
clover, it will be turned under at once, and a 
new one set out elsewhere. 



WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. 155 

There is a space that was planted in early- 
peas. The vines are still sprawling about or 
clinging to the old bush. Unless the latter are 
of cedar, or of some good hard wood, the whole 
rubbish is swept away to the compost heap . The 
ground is then clear and can be prepared for 
a fall or spring crop. If July has not passed, and 
good strong celery plants can be had, these may 
be set out at once. If it is about the lOth of 
August, the early yellow-stone or strap-leaved 
turnips can still be sown. But we will even 
suppose August on the wane, and that our new 
and eager purchaser can do little more with his 
ground that can make any return this year. 

Still, having read some better book than this, 
or having had his eyes opened by experience, 
his own or that of some one else, he does not 
dream of waiting till the following spring, but 
with hearty vigor, commences at once. 

Those old withering cucumber-vines are swept 



156 WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. 

away, and the flourishing weeds with them. It 
the ground is rich, sloping, with excellent drain- 
age, he can sow onion seed there immediately, 
and market the crop in April following. The 
early potatoes are dug, or can be, and thus there 
is a place to set out a new strawberry-bed. The 
sweet corn will be out of the way this month. 
He will not leave the earless stalks to wither, 
and dry up where they stand. Here and there 
one may be left with an exceedingly fine ear for 
seed. But with the rest, as fast as the ears are 
used, the stalks will go to the cows, or if he has 
none, they will be buried in their green succulent 
state, under the compost heap. Well buried 
too ; or else, even though half the garden Avere 
planted in mignonette, the decaying corn, so 
sweet and wholesome in life, will now render 
the region anything but savory. The land thus 
cleared will no doubt be sown with spinach. 
Then there is ground where early cabbage and 



WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. 157 

cauliflower were grown. The onions are dry- 
enough to gather, the bush-beans are past their 
prime, and if not desired for use in their dry 
state, they also can be swept away. The late 
and refuse pods that are left after the vines have 
been picked over many times do not contain 
seed fit for planting. 

Thus here and there through the garden spaces 
can be cleared which may be sown with spinach, 
dwarf German greens, or " sprouts," or set out 
with small refuse onions that will be fit for mar- 
ket in their green state, in April and May follow- 
ing. In early September lettuce can be sown 
and wintered over as will hereafter be explained. 
This last-named vegetable, properly managed, 
can be made very profitable, if partially grown 
in the fall. The same is true of cabbage and 
cauliflower plants kept over through the winter 
for early planting. No amount of effort and ex- 
pense with hot-beds in February and March can 



158 WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN, 

secure plants that will mature as early for mai^ket 
as those preserved from the preceding season in 
cold frames. 

Thus we have seen the new and enlightened 
possessor of a neglected place go to work in the 
autumn as zealously as do the majority in spring, 
and when spring comes he is two or three 
months in advance of his neighbors. While 
they are breaking up and planting their ground 
at great expense, and are compelled to wait till 
midsummer for returns, he is selling crops win- 
tered over, thus meeting the heavy drafts upon 
his purse entailed by the extra work and outlay 
of the opening season. 

When the dying leaves begin to fall in Octo- 
ber, my garden is almost as green with growing 
crops as in the following May, and usually I have 
been able to winter them over without great 
difficulty. Thus, instead of waiting till June and 
July before receiving anything from my ground, 



WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. 1 59 

my sales on the last day of April amounted to 
one hundred and seventeen dollars, and on the 
last of May to two hundred and eighty dollars. 
The heavy and unusual expenses of spring were 
therefore partially met in the spring. 

It is true that farther to the north and on cold, 
wet soils the difficulty of wintering over crops 
would be much greater ; but it is also true that 
in light soils and sheltered locations farther 
south, the facility of so doing would be much 
greater than in our latitude. So much in favor 
of an autumn rather than a spring commence- 
ment of a garden already in a fair state of culti- 
vation. 

But if the reader has taken a new piece of 
ground that must be broken in for the first time, 
the argument for this course is doubly strong. 
If he waits till spring he almost loses a year. If 
there are stones, rocks, bushes, or stumps upon 
it, he cannot clear it up in spring sui^ficicnily 



l6o WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. 

early to raise much that season, but in the long 
autumn months he can work marvellous changes. 
Even if we have nothing more to contend with 
than a stiff sod on the land, great advantages are 
secured by breaking it up in autumn. If this is 
done in August, it will rot sufficiently by Novem- 
ber to permit deep cross ploughing. The de- 
cay of the sod can be greatly hastened by giving 
it a coating of stable manure before it is turned 
under, and at the same time it will go far toward 
giving the land the necessary degree of fertility. 
For it must be remembered that no field, how- 
ever good its condition for farm crops, is rich 
enough for the exactions of garden, nor can one 
year's culture, nor the highest degree of fertiliz- 
ing bring it into a proper state. Under the best 
management it requires time. But we gain al- 
most a year if we commence in autumn. In the 
first place the heavy coat of manure upon the 
sod assists greatly in its decay. By the edge of 



WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. l6l 

winter both are ready to crumble into soil and 
the ground can be thoroughly and deeply cross- 
ploughed. This gives the frost a chance to 
sweeten and pulverize it. In the spring it 
should be again well enriched, ploughed deeply, 
and planted in early potatoes, sweet corn, peas, 
and similar summer crops that would secure good 
cultivation. By July and August these crops 
are gathered and your land is clear. Again ma- 
nure it heavily, plough deeply, very deeply with 
a " lifting subsoil plough," and now your ground 
can be laid out as you desire, and in one short 
year will be in as high a state of culture and fer- 
tility as the majority of gardens around you. 

Still if you are bent on grand success, you 
will not be half satisfied, but by most liberal 
cultivation will secure increasingly large returns 
as the years roll on. 

By the course described, however, you can 

lay out your garden in accordance with your ap- 
11 



l62 WHEN TO COMMENCE A GARDEN. 

proved plan in the autumn following your com- 
mencement, and the summer crops as described 
will go far toward paying the expenses of the 
first year. In August and September your 
strawberry-beds can be set, spring crops 
planted, and in October, cold frames made, 
raspberries, blackberries, currants, trees, and 
grape-vines set out, and you are fairly launched. 



XI. 

WE WILL GO TO WORK. 

Perhaps we have talked long enough on 
general principles, suggestions at large, and had 
now better go practically to work and produce 
that two thousand dollars announced in the 
opening chapter. I will commence consistently 
with my theory, in August of '70, but will speak 
only of such operations as brought returns the 
following year. 

Our old-fashioned one o'clock dinner is over, 
and books now mean dyspepsia, but gardening, 
as I practise it, is health. In the first place, I 
repair to the ancient central apple-tree to pro- 
vide strategy. 

Manufacturing it, as did the generals of the 



164 WE WILL GO TO WORK. 

old school, I sit down before the problem. It 
is not necessary that my forces should assume 
this contemplative attitude also. They can work 
away at those Philistines, the weeds, wherever 
they show themselves, M^iile I develop such def- 
inite, decisive steps as are possible to one also 
burdened with the duty of digesting a dinner. 
The mid-day sun is still intense, and I progress 
with my strategy with an eye to its westward 
decline. But as the vertical rays cease, as the 
cool shadows creep eastward, I step forth from 
my retirement with the air of one resolved. I 
determine, in the first place, upon making a 
strawberry-bed that will astonish the natives. 
Here is a suitable piece of ground from which 
some early crop has been taken. It is in the 
main a sandy loam, a little too light in some 
places but fair throughout. Having had it 
thoroughly cleared, leaving not a sprig of white 
clover or sorrel, for however deep you bury 



WE WILL GO TO WORK. 1 65 

them they are apt to work out and grow (per- 
haps they always do, on the China side, if not 
this), I then directed Thomas to cover it with 
four inches of the very best manure. This was 
an exceedingly heavy coat, far more than is 
usually necessary, but I was bent on producing 
some extraordinary results. My genial land- 
lord, Mr. David, and another neighbor happen- 
ing to pass, indulged in some pleasantries as to 
the flavor of strawberries raised under the cir- 
cumstances, but I knew well that Nature, with 
ten months to work in, was too skilful an al- 
chemist to make any such mistakes. So the 
limited piece of ground was dug very deeply 
and made almost as rich as a hot-bed. Then 
commenced the gradual setting of plants, grad- 
ual, because it was a dry time, and the sun still 
scorchingly hot at mid-day. Therefore I directed 
that the plants should be set out only in the even- 
ing, a few at a time, and well watered. Aflcr- 



1 66 WE WILL GO TO WORK. 

wards they were shaded during the heat of the 
day till they became well rooted and could take 
care of themselves. This shade can be provided 
by leaning a board over a row supporting it by 
a couple of stakes or small stones. If appear- 
ances are not regarded, old raspberry bushes, 
pea-vines, anything that will shade the young 
plants without smothering them, will answer. 
The relief given by a little shade is wonderful, 
and plants will grow in the hottest weather when 
so protected. Where the variety is valuable 
and scarce, they should always be so treated 
when set out in a warm, dry time. 

Of course, if I could have made my bed just 
before a good shower or a night's rain, no such 
precautions would have been needed, and the 
plants would have grown without further care. 

" Why not wait then till the shower comes ? " 
some may ask. 

When will it come ? Yet many days perhaps. 



WE WILL GO TO WORK. 167 

Or it may be when I am away, and I, instead of 
my plants, will be caught in it. Or it will beat 
its musical tattoo on the roof after you are gone 
to bed. What can you then do about it ? More 
than likely it will come on Sunday, and even in 
this lax: age of Sabbath keeping, setting out a 
strawberry-bed would hardly be esteemed an 
act of " necessity or mercy." " He that regard- 
eth the clouds shall not reap," nor get his straw- 
berry-bed made in due season. The earlier you 
can set your plants in summer or fall the better 
your crop the following season, and I determined 
to lose not a day in starting mine and assisting 
Nature through the " dry-spell." At the same 
time, if the rain comes, the provident gardener 
will do his best to make the most of it. If he 
intends setting out plants he will have them 
ready, and the ground also, and then when the 
western horizon darkens, and the mutter of dis- 
tant thunder is heard, or when the cast wind 



1 68 WE WILL GO TO WORK. 

comes sighing in from the ocean, the avant 
courier of the coming storm, he makes every 
moment tell in the putting out of plants, know- 
ing that the refreshing rain-drops can do more 
for them in one hour than can be done by days 
of shading and watering. But with us the thun- 
der gusts seem to hide behind the mountains till 
all prepared, and then to swoop down so sud- 
denly that we are flying for shelter from the big 
drops before we realized that they were com- 
ing. Only too often they raise their black 
heads in the west, and seem coming right down 
upon us with such abundant promise that hope 
and expectation are raised to the highest pitch ; 
then suddenly, as if attracted by some blue 
Highland in the distance, they appear to change 
their minds, and, like the Levite in the parable, 
"pass by on the other side." If, beguiled by 
hopes of a shower, you have set out plants 
largely, then watering and shading is your only 



WE WILL GO TO WORK. 1 69 

chance of saving them. My plan, as I have 
said, was to set out a few plants every night and 
take care of them, to have plants and ground 
ready, and then if there came rain to get out 
beforehand as many as possible. When my 
bed was half filled it did come, and by prompt 
action the rest of the ground was covered in 
time to catch the precious drops. But those 
first set out were growing vigorously in spite of 
dry weather, and after the rain they went for- 
w^ard with a bound, far exceeding the others. 

By the first of September, therefore, my bed 
was filled Avith strong and thrifty plants of the 
following varieties : Two rows of the Wilson, 
two of Durand Seedhng, one of the Russell, one 
of the Agriculturist, two of the Triomphe de 
Gand, and one of the Jucunda. I thought by 
placing the celebrated varieties side by side 
under specially favorable culture, I might learn 
which was the best. The result with all was 



I70 WE WILL GO TO WORK. 

astonishing. A soldier who saw a basket of 
them thought they were tomatoes. The Wil- 
sons of course bore the largest number, and the 
berries also were very large, but many of the 
other named varieties were simply monstrous, 
and they all seemed nearly equal in this instance 
in vigor and productiveness, except the Jucun- 
das, and though these bore as large berries as 
any, the vines were rather feeble and inclined 
to die out. For large, showy berries, few, if any, 
surpass the Jucundas, and with high culture on 
a heavy soil, and kept rigorously in hills, they 
will produce fruit that will stop a man running 
for a train, should it meet his eye. At a fash- 
ionable Broadway fruit store, they would bring 
almost any price asked, but they would be like 
many of their wealthy purchasers, rather insipid 
and hollow. As grown in my grounds their 
flavor is not to be mentioned in the same week 
with the Russell and Triomphe. Still they are 



WE WILL GO TO WORK. 171 

growing in favor, especially as a market-berry, 
and doubtless are just the thing grown in hills 
on heavy land. 

The Durand Seedling has not done as well 
with me as it at first promised. Its foliage has 
seemed somewhat delicate and unable to endure 
the hot sun, and though producing some very 
large fruit, many of the blossoms failed, and 
in shade the berries would " damp off" and 
decay. But with careful hill culture on light 
soils, I should think it might prove one of the 
best among the large varieties. The fruit of 
the Agriculturist also tended somewhat to 
scalding and decay, but with open row or hill 
culture on a light soil it does wonders. As 
grown upon the bed described, the Russell 
would make one of the finest varieties in exist- 
ence, if it were only a little fiiTner. Summing 
up the results of the experiment, it may be said 
that the Wilsons gave the largest yield, while in 



172 WE WILL GO TO WORK. 

view of their firmness, size, as well as the other 
good qualities, the Triomphes perhaps bore 
away the palm. 

But I can emphatically assure the reader that 
the first crop upon the bed, though made with 
so much pains and cost, more than paid all ex- 
penses. At the close of this chapter I will also 
describe another crop raised upon the same 
ground at the same time. 

I give the issue of this little experiment in this 
place in order that it may stand in direct connec- 
tion with the rather elaborate preparation, and 
satisfy the reader that unusual outlay will often 
secure unusual return. But my special reason 
for so doing is to show that strawberry-beds set 
out in autumn will give a handsome crop the 
following season, thus saving a year to the im- 
patient gardener, and the gain of a year even in 
the matter of strawberries is no trifling matter 
in our transient life. I admit that on most soils, 



WE WILL GO TO WORK. 1 73 

and under most circumstances, the plants are 
more certain to grow if set out in early spring. 
If I had to buy my vines at a distance, or was 
about to invest in some new and costly variety, 
I should prefer spring by all means. But if I 
had plenty of young plants in my own garden, 
or could obtain them of a near neighbor, I should 
be equally in favor of summer and fall planting. 
Vines set out in spring will produce nothing 
worth speaking of that season, and should not 
be permitted to bear at all, whereas by early 
summer planting, and the extra care possible in 
a small garden, a large crop can be had the fol- 
lowing June. For instance, my strong plants 
commence throwing out runners rapidly even in 
June while fruiting. If I were anxious to ob- 
tain new runners, and made the ground rich 
and mellow around the producing plants, there 
would be plenty fit for transplanting in early 
July. As we have before described, there are 



174 WE WILL GO TO WORK. 

many spaces throughout the garden that were 
occupied by early potatoes, peas, etc., which 
can now be cleared up and set out with straw- 
berries. Two of my finest beds for '73 were set 
out last July. Thus, from a small bed of good 
strong plants, runners can be taken for trans- 
planting from 4th of July till the middle of Oc- 
tober, and as fast as crops mature in summer 
they can be gathered, and the land, if desired, 
can at once be occupied with this most delicious 
small fruit. I had in '72 a small bed, fifteen 
feet by thirty, of a very choice kind, one indeed 
that promises better than any I ever raised (I 
have tried at least twenty varieties), and from 
this limited area I obtained plants enough, with- 
out special effort, to set out a large portion of my 
garden before October, besides many which were 
given away. I made my rows two feet apart, 
and early plantings were set out two and three 
feet from each other in the row ; but those vines 



WE WILL GO TO WORK. 1:75 

put out in July and August also threw out run- 
ners, and by October filled the rows close up 
with plants. If I had not been anxious to pro- 
duce new vines, I would not have permitted this, 
as the young beds would have been much 
stronger, and in better condition for bearing, if 
all runners had been cut from them. It is true 
that this variety is the most vigorous grown on 
my soil that I have ever seen. Having once 
marked its dark-green foliage, its red stocky 
leaf-stems and runners, you would always recog- 
nize it afterwards even at a distance. Much of 
its fruit was immensely large, and even the last 
pickings from my small bed were of good size. 
I do not know its name with certainty, but 
think it is a new berry, known as Boydan's No. 
30. In the spring of '70 I obtained a few plants 
of six new varieties, and put them out in rows 
side by side. A man weeding them carelessly 
carried off the labels, so I was able to distin- 



176 WE WILL GO TO WORK. 

guish only one kind, the Kentucky Seedling. 
In '71 they all fruited finely, but none proved 
so satisfactory as this unknown friend who had 
lost his name. But true worth will assert itself 
under all circumstances, while the utmost flour- 
ish in title will not long shield the unworthy or 
common-place. I promoted the stranger by 
digging up all the others save the Kentucky, 
and giving him a chance to " spread himself," 
which he immediately did, proving that, like the 
successful men of the world, he only wanted half 
a chance. In the summer of '7 1 , I set out a small 
bed of. this variety, and in '72 obtained a won- 
derful yield from the same. The berry is grown 
on tall fruit stalks, but which are unable to sus- 
tain the weight of the enormous berries. There- 
fore they should be mulched, that is, straw, 
leaves, or green grass cut in summer, should be 
placed around the plants. This keeps the 
ground around them moist, greatly enhances the 



WE WILL GO TO WORK. 1 77 

crop, and also prevents the fruit from lying on 
the ground, thus becoming covered with earth 
and grit. The berries have a long neck, making 
the hulling process easy ; they are firm, solid, 
with a rich crimson flush throughout. 

As I have said, I was so pleased with this 
variety, that in the summer and fall of '72 I set 
out a large portion of my garden with it, and 
should it turn out as well another season, one 
need not ask a more profitable business than 
raising them. Mr. Thomas Skene is trying this 
variety in the greenhouse this winter, and so 
by spring we will know its value for forcing. 

As before intimated, another crop equally 

fragrant, and perhaps taking the world at large 

almost an equal favorite, was raised at the same 

time on the strawberry-bed described above. 

I refer to the aromatic onion. As soon as the 

rows were filled with plants in '70, the little 

black seed of the large red, and the yellow 
13 



178 WE WILL GO TO WORK. 

Danvers varieties were sown between them. At 
that warm season it was but a few days before 
the little onions were pricking through the soil 
thick as hair. I had ordered plenty of seed 
sown, knowing that the plants would have to 
run the gauntlet of the winter frosts. Indeed, 
the whole thing was an experiment, for I never 
knew of its being done in our latitude, and could 
find no instruction in the books on the subject. 
Nevertheless, the presumptuous onions grew 
sturdily on, without the countenance of any 
" authority " or known precedent, and in winter 
they varied in height from six inches to one 
foot. The same covering put over the straw- 
berry-bed also protected them, and in spring 
they nearly all came out as bright as if they had 
only had a good nap, and were just wakened. 
Then a spirit of emulation seemed to spring up 
between them and the strawberry vines. Side 
by side, " neck and neck," they went forward 



WE WILL GO TO WORK. 1 79 

together. Many laughed to see these rather 
dissimilar products of nature growing so amica- 
bly in company. But the strawberry, with an 
inherent, not a borrowed nobility, " put on no 
airs " towards its useful and humble neighbor. 
The same warm winter covering sheltered both. 
They both drew from one enriched soil the 
elements of prosperity. In brief, the condi- 
tions that were favorable for one were also for 
both, and side by side they went on and 
developed in accordance with their own laws 
and nature, thus setting an excellent example to 
the wealthy and working classes. Indeed, that 
intermingled strawberry and onion bed was a 
profound essay on political economy, teaching 
that all classes can prosper together, not by be- 
coming alike, and reducing society to dreary 
monotony, but by each one carrying out with- 
out hindrance or prejudice its own germinal 
character in the most pronounced diversity. 



WE WILL GO TO WORK. 



That is a wretched soil that only suits one 
genus of plants. In an equally miserable con- 
dition is that society where only one class pros- 
pers, even though in its conceit it calls itself 
the " best class." 

In imagination I see some pseudo-political 
economist, some champion of the development 
of the upper-class, at the expense of all the 
others, bristling with indignation, and perhaps 
purple with offended pride. 

" I don't believe in such associations," he ex- 
claims haughtily. " Your plebeian onions will 
affect the flavor of the patrician strawberry, just 
as the upper classes tone down and deteriorate 
as they mingle with inferiors. Separation, sir, 
separation — Chinese walls — these are the hope 
of blue blood." 

"Your premise is false, sir, as it usually is, 
and therefore your conclusion is wrong. The 
onion growing by the strawberry has no influ- 



WE WILL GO TO WORK. 



ence on its flavor whatever. Your artificial 
noblemen no doubt need careful nursing and 
' Chinese walls ; ' but those who have received 
their patent from Heaven will develop as noble- 
men and live as such under all circumstances, 
even as my Triomphes produced the most lus- 
cious vinous-flavored fruit, though a thrifty 
onion grew a few inches away." 

But I am wandering. The garden is so sug- 
gestive of all kinds of truth that one can hardly 
help it. I suppose that is the reason the first 
man was placed in one, since in learning 
gardening he would learn almost everything 
else. 

I will immediately descend from political 
economy and social science to onions, a long de- 
scent some may think, and yet in sU'cngtJi this 
theme will o\.\{.raiik most others. 

I will close with a few practical sentences be- 
fitting this useful but much abused vegetable. 



WE WILL GO TO WORK. 



It was my expectation that the onions between 
the strawberry rows would be out of the way 
long before the fruit was ripe, and so they were, 
save a few I left purposely to see what they 
would come to. Even in March my gardener 
commenced pulling and selling them in their 
green state, and by May ist nearly all were gone, 
realizing the snug sum of forty dollars. This 
is a phase of the subject at which even the most 
aristocratic will not elevate their noses. The 
space occupied by them was exceedingly small. 
It was their earliness, their large green succulent 
tops, and tendency to make good-sized bulbs, 
that secured such prompt sale at high prices. 
They stood very thickly in the rows, and as the 
largest were daily culled out, those remaining 
grew rapidly, and filled their places. 

Those that I left to mature went to seed, just 
as a large bulb set out in the spring will, and 
when dry the strength of the bulbs had gone into 



WE WILL GO TO WORK. 1 83 

the seed, and the former were large but useless. 
If, however, the seed-stalk had been cut away 
and the bulbs used in their green state, they 
would have been most excellent. I was thus 
satisfied that a very early and profitable crop of 
onions could be raised from seed sown in Au- 
gust. 

My next experiment was to sow the seed late 
in September, so that the plants would not be 
large enough in spring to run up to seed, but 
develop large bulbs, as in the case with seed 
sown in April. If the plants would winter over, 
no matter how small they were, the crop would 
be far earlier than any that could be started with 
the opening season, unless it be from what are 
termed " sets " or little onions put out as soon 
as the frost is gone. But I found it would not 
answer. Unless the seed was sown in August, 
the plants did not gain size, vigor, and root- 
power enough to resist the winter. Farther to 



184 WE WILL GO TO WORK. 

the south though, on warm light soils, I should 
think this might be done to great advantage. 
But after so much onion the reader is probably 
ready to take a tearful farewell of this chapter. 



XII. 

THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 

There are few months in the year more 
attractive than September. It reminds you of 
that alHterative description of the matured lady, 
"fair, fat, and forty ; " and he is but a shallow- 
brained man who has not found this class one 
of the most attractive in society. There is a 
beauty of autumn as well as of spring, of age, 
as of youth. I have great hopes of that boy 
who is enamored by a lady " old enough to be 
his mother." He has an aspiring soul that 
dimly recognizes something far beyond itself 
and will never sink satisfied into mediocrity. 
When such a woman grows old gracefully, 
sweetened and ripened in character by the ac- 



1 86 THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 

tion of time, she is a most charming companion 
for all. The infirmities of age have not come, 
but she knows that they are near, and her sym- 
pathies instinctively go out to those who are (as 
she soon will be) bending under the burden of 
years. Her memory of youth is still strong, 
and she turns to it, and to those in its enjoy- 
ment, with a remorseful tenderness, as the emi- 
grant looks back to a loved familiar, but fading 
shore. The fitful waywardness, the April skies 
of youth, the intense feelings and passions of 
midsummer life, are passing into the calm and 
content of early autumn. She is, like the 
season, in a border land between two dissimilar 
states, and having some of the characteristics of 
both. 

Flecks of gray in the "bonny brown hair" 
may awaken regretful thoughts of the approach- 
ing frostiness of age, just as in early September 
there comes sighing through the trees a wind 



THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 187 

that speaks so plainly of the fading year, that 
we are saddened in spite of ourselves. But 
when through all experiences she has kept a 
young heart, it will often show itself in a spright- 
liness, a spring-like, youthful manner, just as 
many days in September remind you of May. 
Thus the lady past her prime, that in the ordi- 
nary stock novel is so generally sneered at, may 
be a most gracious, lovely personage. The 
memory of her trials and temptations in youth, 
the struggles and burdens of middle age on one 
hand, give her the broadest, deepest charity for 
those still passing through these ordeals ; while 
on the other, with strength undiminished, as 
yet, she can stay the tottering steps of age with 
a peculiar and sympathetic tenderness. The 
graces of her mind and character are like the 
flowers of autumn. There is no longer the 
growth of immature foliage and wood, but all 
the strength of the plant goes into rich and 



THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 



varied bloom. The garden is spring-like again 
with all its abundant blossoms, but the flowers 
are larger, deeper, and richer in their coloring, 
more perfect in their form than ever before. 
The drooping annuals make a sudden rapid 
growth, all the "bedding-plants" cover them- 
selves with renewed beauty. Pansies, that in 
hot August were wee "johnny-jumpers," be- 
come pansies again, with great staring, human- 
like faces. The turf grows greener and more 
velvety, and all nature seems to say. Let us 
have one more blessed thrill of life before the 
frosts of death fall. Make the most of Septem- 
ber, for you will have nothing like it till May 
comes round again. Alas! May comes but 
once in human life, and even to the bravest and 
most beautiful, autumn must grow sere and sad 
painfully fast, when there is no hope of the 
" glory that fadeth not away." Such may well 
cling to September. 



THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 1 89 

" Bother all this ! " growls some practical 
reader, "I want you to tell me how to plant 
spinach." 

And so my sentiment becomes sandwiched 
between an onion and spinach-bed. The inter- 
ruption has thoroughly clipped my wings, and 
the rest of the chapter shall be satisfactory even 
to old Money Bags himself. 

Spinach should be sown from the 1st to the 
15th of this month, and in our latitude I should 
have the best expectations from seed put in the 
ground during the first week. Plants that have 
had time to attain good size, with strong long 
roots, winter over the best ; and where you can 
commence selling a good crop in April it is very 
profitable. No great skill is required to raise 
spinach. Richness of soil is the main necessity 
for either a summer or winter crop. Like all 
vegetables grown for their foliage, it must make 
a rapid growth to be good. Therefore it sue- 



I go THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 

ceeds best on a deep, moist soil, but one thor- 
oughly drained, where no water or ice stands 
during the winter. I sow my seed about an 
inch deep, and find great advantage in covering 
it with a half-inch or more of well-rotted 
manure. This gives it a fine start, and seems 
to prevent in some degree the unfavorable 
action of frost. I have used the Round-leaved 
variety, and believe it is regarded as the best 
both for fall and spring sowing. If there is 
any moisture in the ground, the seed comes up 
quickly, and, as with all vegetables, the use of 
the hoe hastens the growth. 

I plant my rows a foot apart and the seed 
quite thickly in the row. Then in spring you 
cut for use in such a way as to thin out, and the 
remaining plants by their rapid growth will fill 
up the space as fast as it is made, so that the 
bed seems like the '^ widow's cruse of oil," con- 
stantly drawn upon, but not diminishing. 



THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. I9I 

But I seldom make a spinach-bed by itself, 
using instead the intervening spaces between 
other things. I put a row or two between my 
hardy raspberries, blackcaps, and blackberries. 
Where I make a new strawberry-bed in summer, 
I sow spinach in September between the rows. 
The same covering and manure answers for 
both, and as the rows are two feet apart, and 
the spinach is marketed in April, they do not 
interfere with each other. This should only be 
done the first fall, and on highly enriched land : 
after that the strawberries should have all to 
themselves. But in the fall and spring of '70- 
71, I raised fine crops in this way, and by the 
time winter commenced in '72 there must have 
been ten or fifteen barrels of spinach growing on 
my new strawberry-beds. The heavy body of 
snow has protected it so far, and if the spring is 
favorable, it will all be marketed by the end of 
the first week in May. 



192 THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 

In addition to what was used in the family in 
the spring of '71, there were thirty-one and one- 
fourth bushels sold, realizing forty-six dollars 
and sixty-four cents. In the following fall, little 
seed was sown, and that was nearly all killed out 
by the hard open winter. But the fall of '72 
promised a crop double in amount to any I have 
raised before. 

The seed of another vegetable belonging to 
the Kale family is also sown in September, and 
its culture and treatment is the same as that of 
spinach. Dwarf German greens or " sprouts " 
is the variety that succeeds best, and has the 
readiest sale. Its foliage resembles that of the 
Ruta-baga Turnip, and it is cut and used in the 
spring precisely as spinach. Its flavor is like 
that •^f the cabbage, but more delicate, and 
coming when vegetables are scarce, it adds to 
the variety, and is welcome. Wherever there 
are Germans there is no difficulty in selling it, 



THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 1 93 

and Mr. Henderson states that sometimes in the 
vicinity of New York it yields a crop worth five 
hundred dollars per acre. Sometimes I succeed 
in wintering it over very nicely ; then again it 
dies out. It requires a light soil and a covering 
of very coarse litter during the coldest weather. 
In the spring of '71, nine and a half bushels were 
sold for twelve dollars — I mention the sales of 
spinach and kale, in connection with their de- 
scription and mode of cultivation, as space will 
permit me to refer to them but briefly hereafter. 
It will be seen that the prices were high, com- 
pared with New York market, but my gardener 
sold the bulk at retail, or in small quantities, and 
so received the sum named. 

I think most gardeners would find it very 
profitable to raise these vegetables, especially 
spinach. If their ground were light, sloping", 
and very rich, their success would be almost cer- 
tain and at little cost. And yet, even fLirmers 
13 



194 THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 

do not raise these crops to any extent, and in 
April, when vegetables are so few, a prompt re- 
munerative sale might be counted upon in any 
locality. 

The next vegetable started in the fall to 
which I shall refer, is Lettuce, and with me it has 
been one of the most important of the entire 
season. I have sown the seed with the best 
success from the loth to the 20th of September. 
Any fair garden ground will answer, as it must 
be taken" up and protected in cold frames the 
latter part of October. This process will be 
described in the next chapter. Therefore the 
fall operation consists only in raising the small 
plants, and this does not require much ground. 
The rows can be sown eight inches apart, and 
the only cultivation needed is to keep the 
ground loose and free from weeds. But the 
selection of the right varieties is very important ; 
and as Burr describes fifty-three kinds, including 



THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 1 95 

the Cos species, and as the seed catalogues are 
not so far behind him in their bewildering pro- 
fusion of candidates for favor, it will be seen 
that the choice is not " Hobson's." And yet 
success depends upon selecting rightly. Mr. 
Henderson tells us how he lost his entire crop 
of early lettuce (a very important one) by sow- 
ing, through mistake, the best summer, instead 
of the best spring variety. 

As the favorite kind for wintering over in 
cold frames, the Early Curled Simpson may be 
named. It does not make a head, but forms 
a large, close, compact mass of leaves, and is de- 
lightfully crisp and delicate in flavor after its 
rapid spring growth. It is very hardy, and I 
have succeeded well in wintering it over in the 
open ground with a slight covering. This 
should be the main crop for fall sowing. I 
have also used three other varieties to great ad- 
vantage. First, the Green Winter, which is 



196 THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 

very hardy, and will generally stand the sever- 
est cold. It makes a fine head early in spring, 
but soon runs up to seed. The Tennis Ball is 
a small but most excellent variety, and makes a 
very compact head. For home use it is unsur- 
passed, and it is one of the best for forcing in 
cold frames, as it takes up so little room. The 
heads can be grown six inches apart each way. 
For a second crop in the spring I find great 
advantage in wintering over a large number of 
the Black Seeded Butter variety. Strong 
plants grown the previous fall attain large size 
in May in the open ground. Nothing started 
in hot-beds in February or March can compete 
with them. By the first week of June, this 
kind makes a head almost as large as a cabbage, 
white and very tender and delicate. 

It is always well to try to winter some plants 
over out of doors. If they die, the loss is 
slight, as the seed and labor cost nothing worth 



THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 1 97 

mentioning. Select a warm sheltered place in 
the garden where no ice or water will stand, 
and sow about September lOth some seed of 
each of the four varieties named, especially of 
the Green Winter. When the ground begins to 
freeze hard, cover with cedar boughs or some 
very coarse litter. Anything that will settle 
down closely on the plants will cause them to de- 
cay. They may come out in the spring almost 
equal to those in the cold frames. As soon as 
the frost is out, they can be taken up and forced 
under glass, or set in the open ground, where, 
from their hardiness, they will soon mature for 
market. 

In the same manner as lettuce the seed of 
cabbage or cauliflower can be sown in the fall. 
In our latitude it should not be planted earlier 
than the 5th of September, or the plants will 
run up to seed in the spring instead of making 
heads ; nor later than the 20th, for then they 



ipS THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 

will be too small to stand the winter. Like let- 
tuce, they can be started in a small bed any- 
where in the garden, and left to grow to the 
middle or latter part of October, when they 
must be removed to cold frames, as will be here- 
after described. I would advise that a good 
sprinkling of lime be raked into the land on 
which the seed is to be sown, and that the cul- 
tivator see to it that none of the Cabbage fam- 
ily, and also that neither turnips nor radishes 
have grown on the ground of his seed-bed for 
a year or two previous. Where this has been 
the case, his plants will be very apt to contract 
a disease known as club-root, and though lime 
is a preventative, he would have no certainty 
against failure. His only safety is to use lime 
or bone-dust freely, and to sow his seed where 
nothing has been grown for two or three years 
that seems to draw the insect so fatal to the 
Cabbage tribe. 



THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 1 99 

As to the best varieties for wintering over, the 
Jersey Wakefield is the favorite around New 
York. I have had very good success with 
it. The head is of fair size, and the outer 
leaves are so few that it requires but little room, 
and can be set two feet apart each way, or even 
a little closer if ground is scarce. The Early 
York matures as quickly, but is nothing like 
as large, and the Wakefield, if abundant, would 
drive it from the market. When the Early Ox 
Heart heads well, it is superior in quality to 
the others. As a succession coming into 
market two or three weeks later than the 
kinds named, the early Flat Dutch and the 
Winningstadt can be recommended. The lat- 
ter is a very large, solid cabbage, and one 
that can be depended on in good soil. For a 
village or local market, Ave would not advise 
the gardener to go largely into cauliflower, for 
the majority in the country will not pay much 



THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 



more for this delicious vegetable than for a 
coarse head of cabbage, and as a crop it is very 
uncertain. If one has soil suitable for it, and 
can develop a demand at high prices, it will pay 
well. Early Erfurt and Early Parris are perhaps 
the best for Avintering over. 

I have also tried the experiment of sowing 
beet seed in the fall, but without much success. 
Noticing that some small beets left In the old bed 
during the winter developed into large roots very 
early in the season, it occurred to me that by 
sowing the seed in September they might live 
till the following spring, and would then be fit 
for market in May, when they would bring a 
large price. A few survived, but the majority 
died under the severe frost. I do not think my 
plants attained sufficient size before winter, and 
perhaps with greater care In covering more 
would have lived. At any rate, I was not 
satisfied with the experiment, and shall try It 



THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 



again. Farther south I should think it might 
be done with great success. 

It is natural that I should come round again 
to the globular onion. Is there not a weakness 
in fallen humanity for this ancient vegetable ? 
The "Chosen People" loathed the "light 
bread," the manna from Heaven, but "wept" 
regretfully at the thought of the "onion." 
Some fair theologians may regard this as proof 
that there has been a sad breaking down in 
human nature. (I wonder if they never eat 
onions sliced in vinegar on the sly, when no 
callers are expected. The cynical world is so 
suspicious of the indignant disgust at onions.) 
Did they grow in Eden ? Could they have 
been the forbidden fruit ? Certainly no mod- 
ern garden of fallen man is regarded as com- 
plete without them. How strong must have 
been those of Egypt when a whole nation wept 
at the very thought of them ! 



THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 



Despise not the onion, Miss Angelica, It is 
classical, nay, more, it is sacred. Behold the 
most venerable nation of the world in tears — 
" the people weeping throughout their families, 
every man in the door of his tent." What was 
the touching cause. Memory — memory of the 
past — past " leeks, onions, and garlic." 

Through the leeks, Hebrew patriotism, forti- 
tude, and faith oozed out, and unmanned, they 
wept aloud. Thus the associations of mystery, 
antiquity, and sentiment, as well as deepest 
emotion, centre in this odorous bulb. Cease, 
then, Angelica — cease, artificial society, thy un- 
just and too often assumed contempt for the 
onion. Let us be true. 

Braced by these historical memories, and the 
record of sales on my cash-book, I shall boldly 
refer to the onion whenever occasion requires ; 
and I now proceed to state I have found great 
advantage in putting many of my " sets " (small 



THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 203 

onions) in the ground during September and at 
any time when convenient. I use the largest of 
my sets in this manner— those that would go to 
seed in the spring any way, and also any refuse 
onions that I have or can buy at slight cost. 
Occasionally rows of this vegetable attaining but 
little size have not been used, and I have sim- 
ply let them stand during the season. In Au- 
gust their tops die down, but in the moist, cool 
weather of September they start and grow 
again, and even go ahead of those set out, and 
by winter are strong plants. I then have the 
ground betiveen them covered with light and 
partly decayed manure, and this keeps the frost 
from heaving them out. The plants themselves 
should not be covered deeply with anything, 
or they will decay. A little very coarse litter 
in the coldest weather is all that is necessary. 
From beds so treated the onions were fit for 



204 THE CAMPAIGN IN SEPTEMBER. 

market in their green state by the 25th of March 
in '71- 

Let the practical reader smack his lips over 
the closing flavor of this chapter, and forget the 
sentiment in the opening pages. 



XIII. 

PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

October has come, bringing labors abundant 
in the garden. Every day now may be made 
to tell, not only on the success of the coming 
summ.ers, but of coming years. But work 
is play in the cool, brilliant days of this 
most beautiful month, and every inhalation 
of the bracing air over the fresh-turned earth 
means health and longer life. If ministers 
and brain-workers generally could manage to 
spend October in the varied labors now required 
in their own gardens, they would not break 
down much under a century. I say their own, 
for I doubt whether the exercise would be as 
beneficial in some one else's crarden. The work 



2o6 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

might be the same, but a certain zest would be 
wanting, just as a glass of cider is rather flat 
without its sparkle and carbonic acid gas. Even 
ministers have not reached that point of dis- 
interestedness which would enable them to work 
in a neighbor's garden with the same zeal and 
pleasure, and therefore the same benefit, as in 
their own. Exercise that is taken m.echanically 
with no heart or enjoyment, does a man no 
more good than the running of a machine does 
it. It simply tends to wear out. I have seen 
good men solemnly sawing wood before break- 
fast to strengthen their constitution. I fear 
only iron constitutions can bear such tonics. I 
once tried it myself in student days, and the result 
was backache, headache, and general prostra- 
tion. Exercise in the way of recreation must 
give employment to the mind as well as the 
body, and must be of a kind that, as the children 
say, is "fun" to us. It should be performed 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 207 

con amore. Otherwise it becomes but another 
phase of wearing work. I am satisfied that the 
Good Father meant that His children should 
play not a little all through their earthly lives, 
and if grave men and women played more, they 
could do more and better work. Why should 
not men play ? Don't old apple-trees blossom 
as well as the daisies ? Wearing toil was never 
meant for unfallen man, and yet Adam and Eve 
were gardeners from the first. (For I am satis- 
fied that Eve did not sit in a bower and read 
novels all day while Adam "delved," and we 
know she did not spend her time in dressing.) 
Therefore, on our cursed thistle-growing earth, 
may we not find in the garden hints of that 
labor that rests body and soul — labor having 
more enjoyment than wanton frolic ? Come 
with me into my garden and sec, even when 
preparing for winter, instead of spring with its 
promise, and summer with its ripe fulfilment. 



2o8 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

We will first mow the asparagus bed and 
burn the dying tops, for if the seeds of this 
most delicious vegetable (in its place) become 
scattered, they make a troublesome weed. 
Now cover the bed with two or three inches of 
stable manure, and it is done for till the follow- 
ing spring. 

No frosts have fallen yet, but they are nightly 
expected, therefore we must be ready. The 
beets had better be gathered in at once and 
placed in a cool cellar, as frost injures them. I 
have found that by putting my roots in a barrel 
and covering them with six inches of fresh 
earth, it prevented them from wilting. It has 
been my custom to plant bush-beans in early 
August, in odd places, where early crops have 
matured. By the last of September and the 
first week of October, the vines are full of green 
tender pods. These put away in pickle will 
keep till beans come again, and when properly 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 2 09 

freshened and prepared for the table, you can 
scarcely tell them in February and March from 
those just picked. 

In some places they would also find a ready 
sale in the fall; though out of season. We find 
the limas full of green but well-filled pods. 
One slight frost would spoil them all, but if 
picked before it, and spread thin on the garret 
floor, they will make one of our best winter 
vegetables. We will give the late cabbage and 
cauliflower one more good hoeing, and pull out 
any that are diseased. The carrots should be 
taken up before the ground begins to freeze, 
and the squashes gathered before the frost 
touches them. The celery is growing fast now, 
the cool weather just suiting it, and therefore 
every few days it should be well earthed up so 
that the blanching process may go on Avith the 
growth. Select a few well-loaded tomato- 
vines and egg-plants in some sheltered place, 
14 



2IO PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

if possible, and be prepared to cover them 
well in case of a cold night. I have known 
all the vines to be killed by one frost in early 
October, and then there was no frost till quite 
late in November. If a few vines could have 
been protected through theit one cold snap, they 
would have supplied the family with tomatoes 
a month longer. The late supply can also' be 
eked out by hanging up a few well-filled vines 
in a dry, sunny place, in some out-building 
or attic, and they will gradually ripen their 
fruit. Turnips will make their chief growth 
in this month, and it is always better to 
have them in rows, so that they can be often 
hoed. Keep the spinach, kale, and onions 
growing rapidly by frequent cultivation. 

And now we come to the main and special 
work of the season, preparation for the future. 
First we will remember those sweet friends that 
have brightened our eyes all summer. Flower 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 211 

seeds will be gathered and labelled, plants that 
we wish to preserve will now be put in pots, 
tender bulbs, such as the tube rose and gladio- 
lus, taken up and stowed in a cool, dry place. 
Then, that spring may be doubly welcomed, we 
will make our crocus, tulip, and hyacinth beds. 
The two last named should be planted four 
inches deep, and the smaller bulbs about half 
the distance. When severe frosts commence, 
some coarse litter should be thrown over the 
beds. Space will not permit me to go into the 
subject of flowers to that degree that inclination 
prompts. Moreover, the mercenary phase of 
these papers rather forbids it, as my play has 
been so closely linked with profit. But I can 
refer the reader to a charming practical little 
book, by Miss Warner, and published by Ran- 
dolph &: Co. If one can read that without 
sending to Mr. Vick, or some one, for flower 
seeds and bulbs, it may be doubted whether he 



212 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

(or she) is descended from Adam. We will, 
therefore, return to those products of the garden 
that appeal to the grosser sense of taste. 

Currant and gooseberry bushes should now 
be pruned ; that is, old, half-dead wood cut out, 
and all trimmed into shape. If more plants are 
desired, cuttings from the new wood, grown 
during the past summer, can be made and set 
out about a foot apart in the row. The cuttings 
may be from five to eight inches in length, and 
should be put in the ground about four inches, 
and the soil made firm around them. They 
then may be left to grow one or two seasons, 
according to convenience, and afterwards put 
where they are to fruit. Good soil, freedom 
from weeds, and liberal use of pruning knife, are 
all that the currant and gooseberry ask in order 
to make regular and full returns. Strong plants 
may also be had by bending the bushes down 
and covering them partially with earth, or bet- 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 213 

ter still, heaping the soil up around them in the 
fall, and then every stalk will not only bear 
fruit, but will throw out roots, and the whole 
bush may be divided in the following October 
into a half a dozen or more vigorous new plants. 
Now is the time, also, to put out the bushes 
where they are expected to grow for years to 
come ; and as they can be had at no great cost, 
it would be well for those who have none to get 
their first supply at the nursery. It is true, as 
we have said, that currants will grow in neglect- 
ed corners, along fences, anywhere that its roots 
can get half a hold upon the soil, but it is also 
true that it will make double return in thor- 
oughly enriched garden soil. It is a fruit that 
a slovenly cultivator can depend upon, but also 
one that the careful gardener can do wonders 
with. The currant worm is proving a formida- 
ble enemy in some districts, but Mr. Skene has 
fought them successfully by thoroughly syring- 



2 14 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

ing the bushes with suds of carbolic-acid soap. 
In the open garden the bushes may be set in 
rows five feet apart, and four feet distant in the 
row. In obtaining gooseberries, ask for those 
varieties that do not mildew, such as Hough- 
ton's Seedling. 

All kinds of fruit-trees and grape-vines may 
now be set out, even to better advantage than 
in the spring ; and there is now no such pressure 
for time as will prevent its being done carefully. 
It may be safer farther north to put out stone 
fruits in spring, but that is a question for 
local authorities to decide. We are sufficiently 
utilitarian to advise the owners of small places 
to put out fruit-trees in the main, rather 
than those which are merely ornamental. If 
properly pruned and trained, fruit-trees are 
ornamental as well as useful. They are great 
fragrant bouquets in spring, and their laden 
boughs throughout the season suggest moral 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 215 

and religious lessons, good dinners, and spend- 
ing money. Why should not all these things 
go together, good Doctor Theologicus ? 

As to varieties, if we are planting for home 
use, there should be a succession in time of 
ripening, with the main crop coming late, so 
that it will keep into the fall and Avinter. If 
we have the market mainly in view, then it is 
well to select more in view of the popular 
demand, learned from the market. We must 
also remember, that the list of highly recom- 
mended varieties is very large, and that some 
succeed admirably in one place, and not in 
another. We must therefore learn, by inquiry 
and observation, what kinds are best adapted 
to our locality. 

We will see to it that we obtain only fair, 
straight, vigorous trees. No nursery-man shall 
palm off on us any others. Trees arc like peo- 
ple. Each one has its own constitution, and 



2l6 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

some are dwarfed and weakly from the start. 
Sickly babies should have the tenderest care, 
but to feeble trees in their infancy, the Spartan 
law should apply. They should be destroyed. 
Having obtained the trees, we will not put 
them in the ground like posts, but dig a fair 
round hole, twice as large and twice as deep as 
the roots seem to require. Many a sagacious 
man saves ten or fifteen minutes in setting out 
a tree, but loses half a dozen years in growth or 
bearing. Slip-shod work is usually economical 
after this style. In digging the hole, we will 
put all the good surface earth on one side, and 
the poor yellow subsoil on the other. The bot- 
tom of the hole will be filled up with good black 
soil, mixed with compost or zvell-rottcd manure. 
If a lot of bones can be thrown in also, their 
gradual decay will be of great benefit. Set the 
tree in the ground with roots well spread out, 
just as deeply as it stood before it was taken up. 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 217 

Sprinkle fine rich earth (never coarse ma- 
nure) among and over the roots, so that they 
may have good ready material to draw on at 
once. Over the surface, the poor yellow soil 
from the bottom of the hole may be spread, 
and this covered with coarse manure as a mulch. 
Pour a pail of water around the tree, to settle 
the earth about its roots, and it is started like a 
boy with a good education. If it don't do well, 
it is its own fault. Of course, it wants looking 
after, from time to time, as we all do. 

Grape-vines can be treated in the same gen- 
eral way, but we think that even the most hardy 
varieties had better be covered with earth the 
first winter, as a vine just set out cannot resist 
the cold like one long established. In choosing 
a spot for grape-vines, take one that is rather 
warm, dry, and with thorough drainage. Trees 
should have stakes at once, otherwise Novem- 
ber winds will whip them to death ; and three 



2l8 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

strong stakes should be driven over the httle 
vine, or otherwise some careless foot may crush 
off the one or two buds on which your hopes 
may depend. 

I have great faith in the raspberry as a profit- 
able crop, and with me it has been next to the 
strawberry in value. The latter part of October 
is the best time to set them out. In spring 
there is apt to be delay, and the buds just above 
the roots that make the new canes are often so 
far started, that it is next to impossible to get 
the plants in the ground Avithout breaking them 
off. If your plants are to consist of the Hudson 
River Antwerp, or some other tender and for- 
eign variety, you can scarcely get your ground 
in too fine order. Not only must it be thoroughly 
enriched, but deep ploughing and careful cultiva- 
tion is also required. If we are expecting to 
buy plants, it would be well, during the bearing 
season, to look around among those who have 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 219 

them for sale, and make our purchase of him 
whose vines show a tendency to great vigor and 
productiveness. For the same variety will look 
very differently, and really have marked diversi- 
ties in different localities, and under varied 
treatment ; and some growers' plants, from 
something unfavorable in soil or culture, become 
feeble in their constitution, and no amount of 
care can make them do so well as those from a 
thrifty stock. One great point of success is 
the continued selection of the strong and pro- 
lific. If the Clark and Philadelphia varieties are 
employed, the same high degree of fertility is 
not required, as they are naturally much more 
vigorous in their growth. But the same clean, 
careful culture should be practised with all 
kinds. Hard-baked soil, grass and weeds, will 
discourage the hardiest native varieties, and the 
cultivator will deserve nothing from his bushes 
but thorns. 



2 20 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

We cannot recommend the Philadelphia vari- 
ety, when better can be raised. It is true they 
are very hardy, and immense bearers, but the 
fruit is small, soft, and nearly all ripens at once, 
and if not all picked promptly, drops off. Still, 
on many soils other varieties do not succeed 
well, and on poor sandy ground this kind will 
do remarkably well. But put them in Wash- 
ington Market alongside of the Antwerp, and 
they make a sorry show. For a local market, 
and when they can be sent to a city quickly 
without rough handling, the Clark is a very fine 
variety. The only trouble is, that they are very 
soft, and apt to mash down in carriage. But it 
is a hardy, kind, vigorous grower, and very 
prolific. They do not all ripen together either, 
and one has some leeway in getting them 
picked. Mine continue in bearing almost a 
month. There are some new varieties that are 
promising well. 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 221 

It would be well to make careful inquiries be- 
fore setting out largely of any one kind, but for 
the home supply and a local market the Clark 
may be depended on ; and if the Hudson River 
Antwerp does well in your locality, you need 
ask no better variety. My experience with the 
white varieties is, that they are too soft even for 
the local market, but they make a pretty change 
in the home garden. The Franconia (red) has 
proved an excellent berry with me, firm and 
productive. A new red variety called the Na- 
omi is very highly spoken of. For field cult- 
ure, raspberries should be set out four feet each 
way, so that the plough and cultivator can run 
between them. 

The Philadelphia, Purple Cane, and Black- 
cap varieties need no protection in winter, and 
the same is also said of the Naomi. But even 
though it is claimed that the Clark and Franco- 
nia are perfectly hardy, I found it to pay to lay 



222 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

them down and cover with earth the same as the 
Antwerps. In the winter of '71-2 even the 
Philadelphias were badly killed, and it is my 
custom to bury this variety also. Last summer 
I visited a gentleman who had ten times as much 
ground in the Clark and Philadelphia varieties 
as I had, but my crop was ten times as large, I 
should think. Simply because my vines had 
been buried. Ten or twenty dollars spent in 
covering his vines would have given him five 
hundred dollars more in fruit. 

In setting out your plants, cut them back to 
about six inches, so that all the strength of the 
root may go in producing new growth. Far 
more is lost than is gained by trying to get a 
crop the first year. 

Blackberries may now be set out also. Their 
stronger habit of growth requires more space 
than raspberries, and, therefore, the rows should 
be at least six feet apart, and the plants stand 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 223 

four feet from each other in the row. The canes 
should be cut off about six inches above the 
ground, and the second season you may hope 
for a good crop. They do not by any means 
require as rich ground as the raspberry, and too 
high feeding would only injure them by stimu- 
lating too large a growth of immature wood. 
In our latitude the blackberry is so apt to 
winter-kill, that their cultivation is rather dis- 
couraging. If some perfectly hardy variety 
could be originated, it would be a great desider- 
atum. The three varieties that I have tried, the 
Wilson, Lawton, and Kittatinny, all kill badly. 
The last two varieties are usually too strong and 
stocky to lay clown and cover with earth as we 
do raspberries, but the more slender, trailing 
Wilson variety might be so treated without 
great difficulty. It has been my experience 
that blackberries require a light, thoroughly 
drained soil, so that the wood may ripen 



2 24 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

well before winter, while raspberries do better 
on a moist loam. A little shade is to the 
advantage of the latter also, and therefore it is 
well to set out standard pear-trees among them. 
The thorough cultivation required by the rasp- 
berries will greatly stimulate the growth of the 
trees, and their partial shade will be a benefit. 

Cold frames should be ready the latter part 
of this month. Mine are made in the following 
simple, inexpensive way. A dry piece of ground 
is selected, which will be in no danger from 
melting snow and water, during the winter. 
The location should be sheltered from the north 
and west if possible. I sometimes excavate the 
soil two feet, throwing the good surface earth in 
one place, and the subsoil in another ; then fill- 
ing up the pit again, to the depth of one foot, 
with the best soil. Around the edge of this pit 
boards are placed, so as to form a simple box 
according in size to my sash. This box is made 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 225 

by nailing a wide board on the north side to 
firmly driven stakes, and a narrower one is 
arranged in the same way on the south side. 
Boards across the ends complete the rude, but 
effective appliance. The sash facing the south 
can now be laid on the boards when required, 
and the difference in width of the boards will 
give an inclination sufficient to carry off the 
water. When hurried, I have simply driven 
stakes in level ground, nailed the boards to 
them, and the work was done. But it is an ad- 
ditional protection to the plants to be twelve or 
eighteen inches below the surface of the ground. 
As I have picked up in our village old windows 
and sash of different sizes, I have made my 
boxes accordingly. 

During the last ten days of October, I fill up 
these cold frames with lettuce, cabbage, and 
cauliflower plants, setting the last two named 

well in the ground — down to the leaves, so that 
15 



2 26 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

no part of the stem is exposed. If the cabbage 
plants are rather small, they can be set from half 
to an inch apart in the rows, and the rows tvv^o 
inches apart ; for growth is not aimed at now, 
but simply their preservation till spring. 

I have always had the best success with let- 
tuce, and seldom lose many plants. I put them 
as close as they can stand in rows three inches 
apart. Thus a small frame Avill winter over a 
great many. The ground must be pressed very 
firm about the roots, and kept so. Where it has 
tended to freeze and thaw during the winter and 
throw the roots out, I have found much advan- 
tage in filling up the spaces between the plants 
with dry sand. 

At first these almost hardy vegetables will re- 
quire no protection in the cold frames, but as 
freezing nights come on, the sash should be 
placed over them, and taken off during the day, 
and even during the winter they should be thor- 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 227 

oughly aired in mild weather. As spring ap- 
proaches the sash must be pushed down or taken 
off when the sun shines warmly, or the plants 
will be rendered tender, and premature growth 
induced. The earth should be heaped up 
around the outside of the boxes, as this renders 
them warmer and tighter. It is not necessary 
that the earth in these frames should be very 
rich, since they are used for storing rather than 
growing purposes. Still, I make the most of 
mine so, since early in spring I thin my lettuce- 
plants out by setting them in the open ground, 
or in frames prepared for forcing them. These 
are cold frames made in the fall, like those de- 
scribed above ; but the earth in them is very 
rich, and designed to promote rapid growth. 
No plants are put in them in fall, and as 
winter approaches they are filled up with leaves, 
so that no frost can reach the soil. By the first 
of March the leaves can be thrown out, and you 



2 28 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 



have rich, mellow ground in which lettuce-plants 
from the cold frames can be set out. They are 
then covered with glass, and by the end of the 
month are fit for market, while many of your 
neighbors have not as yet sown their seed. 

All through the fall season, till the ground is 
frozen, much can be done in the way of im- 
provement, and preparation for the following 
year, in the way of picking off stone, drainage, 
etc. Sometimes during the winter the water 
collects in parts of a field or garden, and does 
much harm. This can often be prevented by 
opening a small surface drain, from such locali- 
ties, in November. All loam and clay lands are 
greatly benefited by deep ploughing, spading, 
or trenching in the fall. This very important 
work can often be continued even into Decem- 
ber, and the gardener will find it greatly to his 
advantage to turn up every foot of land possible 
to the action of frost. 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 229 

As winter approaches, we prune our tender 
raspberries, Wilson blackberries, and grape- 
vines, then lay them down and cover with 
earth. Bury them well, or heavy rains will 
wash them out. Our strawberries should be 
tucked away under a good warm covering. I 
have usually employed stable manure, raking 
off only the coarsest part in the spring. In 
this way the plants are greatly stimulated as 
well as protected. But leaves, straw, or any 
litter will answer. Fruit trees may be carefully 
pruned at our leisure, by cutting back the too 
exuberant growth of new wood, and by trim- 
ming them into shapely appearance. 

The closing scenes have come, and we are 
about ready to go into winter quarters. But 
after all this careful preparation for another 
season, we know that winter does not mean 
death to our earden. From the first white 



230 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 



hoar-frost forward , autumn only brings to 
Nature rest and sleep. 

In truth, Nature teaches man how to die, 
or rather how to provide for another life. 
There is much sentimental sighing over the 
falling leaves, fading flowers, and "winter's 
deadly breath." 

"All that I see speaks to me of death," 
lamented a lachrymose moralist standing in a 
frost-bitten garden on a crisp, brilliant October 
day. This remark had been suggested by a 
shower of maple leaves, dropped around him 
by a sudden gust, that went ruthlessly through 
the grove, stripping the trees of their summer 
glory. And half the world sighs with him. 

Why do they not note that the leaves are so 
rich and gay in coloring that they seem like 
rainbows falling in fragments. Why do they 
not see that every point where a leaf has 
parted from its spray, a bud has formed 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 23 1 

that will develop into other leaves, as large, 
green, and beautiful as were ever those now 
dropping away. Why should they not fall ? 
Their work is done. They have reached their 
perfection. So far from assuming the sombre 
leaden hue of death before they change into 
other forms, they blush with joy, they crown 
themselves with gold, as if exulting over fin- 
ished achievement. They are invested in the 
royal purple of victors, rather than the sad- 
colored hues of the vanquished. 

But how about these frosted flowers that are 
in such sad contrast with their appearance a 
week ago ? Even here death is more seeming 
than real. The frost did not fall till innu- 
merable seeds were ripened, and this plant 
that looks so forlorn and dying, has a sturdy 
root, that, like a true, but unobtrusive friend, 
will see it through the " tight times" of frozen 
ground and icy nights. 



232 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

While flourishing, blooming, fruiting, and 
having a good time generally in the summer 
sunshine, every plant in this garden, every 
shrub and tree on lawn or in grove, has at the 
same time been providing that it may live 
again. All the strength has not gone into one 
summer's growth. All the richness of ground 
and sap has not been expended in making a 
show for one brief season. In some wise, 
successful way, they have all the time been 
carrying forward the vital principle, that it 
might again be established under new and if 
possible more favorable auspices. 

Shame on you, therefore, men and women of 
the world, who expend your whole strength on 
the passing hour on this first stage of the 
journey, this first crude phase of life, with no 
thought or provision for what is coming. Is 
this all your boasted reason — your high en- 
dowment does for you ? Even the weeds of my 



PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 233 

garden do better, and while flourishing one 
season, at the same time see to it that their poor 
hfe may have a chance of flaunting under the 
blue skies and sunshine of another summer. 
Sad indeed would autumn be if your death 
took the place of Nature's change and sleep. 
Every bud on the leafless trees, every seed and 
root hiding in the snow-mantled earth, is a 
reproach to your narrow, earth-bounded life. 

Were your gardens any the less luxuriant, 
beautiful, fruitful, last summer, because at the 
same time they developed the means of continu- 
ing so for all the future ? And why should it 
take from the bloom of our lives, as we provide 
for their blossoming in a happier clime ? 

Every purple-tipped strawberry runner, every 
bud forming at the stem of the leaf, every 
ripening seed, should teach us that it is God's 
will that we should live and be happy in the 
future as well as in the present. 



234 PREPARING FOR WINTER QUARTERS. 

The frosts of autumn therefore do not mean 
death. They merely put Nature to rest when 
her proper bedtime comes, and winter soon 
after tucks her away under a fleecy blanket till 
the call of spring awakens. 

But when disease attacks tree or plant, they 
may die even in the midst of spring showers 
and summer sunshine. It is sin, not death, that 
destroys man. All that death need mean is 
sleep, and a change for the better. 

Sleep then, my garden ! I know you will 
awaken, like some dear friends Avhose eyes I 
have seen closed, and their bodies, like the 
precious seed, covered deeply in the grave. 



XIV. 

GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

The holidays are past, and Santa Claus has 
either remembered us, or we were obhged to 
remember that Ave were Santa Claus. Snow 
and sleigh-riding have lost their novelty. We 
have been to town, read the new books, had 
the influenza, nearly finished our lecture course, 
and in brief have almost exhausted the proper 
things of the winter season. The days are 
growing longer, and often, something in their 
sunnier light and warmer breath reminds us of 
the friends in the garden, who are sleeping in 
their winter graves, still deep under the snow ; 
but we know the time of resurrection is com- 
ing, when in robes new and rainbow-hucd, they 
Avill rise from the earth into beautiful life. 



236 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

The first hints of spring are subtle, delicate, 
but wonderfully suggestive. As you step out 
of your door some sunny morning the last of 
February, no matter how bleak and wintry the 
landscape may still appear, you feel in a vague, 
pleasurable way the influences of the opening 
season. There is a peculiar fragrance in the 
air, coming not from blossoms, for there are 
none, uncaused by budding vegetation, for as 
yet sleep rests on the pallid face of Nature. 
Not a bud has stirred, and the withered herb- 
age is still buried deeply under the snow. And 
yet, by some strange alchemy, from some un- 
known source is this delicate perfume distilled. 
Do not the old farmers account for it when, on 
going out on such a morning, they snuff the 
air, and say : 

" It smells like spring." 

It is then spring's own peculiar and appro- 
priate odor; and when we recognize it, we 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 237 

know that this most welcome season is near ; 
just a certain fragrance assures us that a bunch 
of violets is not far off. The organization of 
the natural gardener is very susceptible to these 
influences, and when this impalpable aroma of 
spring first greets him, he has a solid satisfac- 
tion such as a stock dividend inspires in most 
men. He is allured by it to draw on his rubber 
boots and wade out into the snow-clad garden. 
But, after floundering around for a time with 
his pruning-knife, and having peeped into his 
cold frames^ — somewhat as the anxious mother 
occasionally looks into her crib and trundle- 
bed, where exuberant life is under the paralysis 
of sleep — he at last, chilled and shivering, gladly 
takes refuge in the warmest corner by the ruddy 
fire. 

But the awakened garden spirit is strong 
upon him, and he cannot and will not resist its 
spells. Old numbers of the American Agri- 



238 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

culturist or Moore s Rural New Yorker are 
dragged from some dusty hiding-place, and 
pored over with an interest that no plot in a 
novel can awaken. His limited library bearing 
on the garden will be drawn upon as he reads 
up on certain points, or seeks to learn the opin- 
ion of others as to the culture and value of 
certain crops. 

And this leads us to say that a gardener's 
labors (if such you can call them) over a winter 
fire, are the most profitable in the year. 

But little confidence does that campaign in- 
spire which is carried forward on the hap-hazard 
principle ; and strategy provided after dinner 
on hot afternoons will not answer for the main 
operations of the year. Therefore draw your 
desk or table to the easy-chair by the fireside, 
and with pen and paper elaborate your plans, so 
that when the season opens you will have 
nothing to do but carry them out with the ut- 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 239 

most vigor. If taste and time permit, it is well 
to make maps of the garden, and indeed of 
one's entire place upon a certain scale, so that 
all may be accurately before the eye, rather 
than indefinitely present to memory. Then 
every tree will have its proper location, and it 
can be seen where others might be located. 
Ground already occupied can be so described, 
and you can carefully decide how you will plant 
the still open spaces. From garden manuals 
and papers, you can learn what crops are best 
suited to your soils, what modes of culture can 
be followed to greatest advantage. All now can 
be settled definitely for the best, but such wise 
deliberation would be impossible in the hurry of 
the opening season. 

A clear, well-arranged plan always saves 
much time in all operations, but especially in a 
garden. In regard to culture and crops, there 
are such diversities of opinion and conflicting 



240 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

claims, that it is well to have something settled 
beforehand. Having resolved on some good 
methods, on selections that seem the best, push 
these right through, and if you have made 
mistakes and can see room for improvements, 
mark well just where, and make the changes for 
the better the following season. The man who 
in April or May is following the impulses of his 
own mind, bewildered by the variety of things 
that all need to be done at once seemingly, or 
who listens to a neighbor who leans over the 
fence and suggests, will probably have a strange 
jumble of a garden. 

Then, in addition to the saving of time by 
having a plan, is the still greater saving of 
worry. A man who has a definite course 
marked out works with almost twice the ease 
and rapidity of one who does not know exactly 
what to do next. Worry wears much faster 
than work. It is like a shutter slamming back 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 24I 

and forth to no purpose on a gusty day. Every 
spiteful bang is a jar and a wrench. Work is 
Hke well-oiled machinery running quietly in its 
grooves. Therefore, by careful plotting, careful 
reading and thought, and a well-digested plan, 
let us be prepared to work, not worry in our 
gardens, when spring opens. All this makes a 
pretty pastime for winter evenings, besides be- 
ing eminently useful employment. 

Agriculture offers scope for almost unlimited 
improvement. In no calling can skill and 
knowledge be made more effectual. 

This knowledge is obtained, like that of any 
other subject, by thoughtful, judicious reading 
and observation, and by the most careful com- 
parison of theories and broad generalizations of 
the facts of the garden. It will never do to 
apply to the garden the ancient mode of phi- 
losophy : that of first finding a theory that suits 

you, and then insisting that Nature shall con- 
16 



242 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

form to it. Tiie good dame will probably do 
nothing of the kind, and then what is your 
theory worth ? The Baconian system of facts 
first, and deductions afterwards, must apply 
here as elsewhere. But the gardener who re- 
mains ignorant of facts and makes no deduc- 
tions, Nature justly frowns upon, and makes 
abundant deductions for him in the annual 
yield of his ground. I know that advocates of 
agricultural ignorance point to what they term 
" illiterate gardeners," and say : 

" Look at what they accomplish without any 
reading, scientific or otherwise ! " 

Do they accomplish their success without 
knowledge ? So many broad-minded persons 
(as they deem themselves) in good society, 
imagine that people must be well dressed, and 
read, in order to have knowledge. Tliere are 
two ways of acquiring this : one from books, 
the other from things about which the books are 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 243 

written ; and the latter is by far the best source 
of information, only it is school that "keeps in " 
a long time, and requires patient learners. It 
is in this that the " illiterate gardener," as you 
term him, has studied ; but when you come to 
talk to him on his specialty, you may find that 
the illiteracy belongs to the questioner. If the 
kid-gloved theorist will go to work practically 
under Nature's instructions for a dozen years or 
more, he may find that though attending what 
may be termed a "dame's school," he will 
learn more than volumes can teach. Books 
aim to give, in brief, the slow teachings of ex- 
perience, and as life is short, we avail ourselves 
of" short-cuts, and quick methods." 

But the best knowledge is best gained by 
putting books and experience together, and let- 
ting one help the other. Books broaden and 
liberalize, remove prejudices, and stimulate to 
higher attainment. Facts, experience in the gar- 



244 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

den itself, corrects crude theories, and winnows 
out the chaff. But when it comes to skill, the 
"prentice hand" must acquire it mainly by 
practice. All the medical reading in the world 
would not make a good physician, though most 
essential in preparation ; he must not only read 
about disease, but see it, treat it, and have ex- 
perience in regard to it. But experience gives 
skill doubly fast, when careful reading and good 
abstract knowledge has prepared the way ; and 
this preparation can best be made over the 
winter fire. 

Then again, the spring catalogues are now 
arriving, and they are enough to give one a per- 
fect fever over gardening. Lying before me is 
one that is a marvel of good taste and beauty, 
sent out by Mr. James Vick, of Rochester. In 
it advertising becomes a fine art. So sugges- 
tive and accurate are the engraving of vegetables, 
and especially the flowers, that we recognize 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 245 

old friends at a glance, and the latter stand out 
so clearly on the page, that it would seem that 
we could gather them into a bouquet. In send- 
ing out thousands of such catalogues, or rather 
pretty little volumes of one hundred and thirty- 
two pages, Mr. Vick may justly be regarded as 
a public benefactor, for they cannot fail to 
greatly increase the love for rural life ; and they 
certainly impart much practical instruction in 
regard to it, while at the same time offering for 
sale the varied contents of the largest seed store 
in the world. 

Looking as if it " meant business," R. H. 
Allen & Co.'s Catalogue, with its sober, solid 
appearance, catches my eye. It is an old friend, 
and has laid on my table every spring for ten 
years or more. Direct, simple, plainly indicat- 
ing the best varieties among the many candi- 
dates for favor, it always inspires confidence. 
How often in the wane of winter I have looked 



246 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

through its pages, and marked the kinds I de- 
cided upon raising. 

I can assure the ladies that the bHss of look- 
ing through the fashion-plates and ordering the 
spring styles, is not to be compared with the 
deliberation on the seeds you intend raising. 
Then only less welcome, because less familiar, 
are the catalogues of Peter Henderson, B. K. 
Bhss & Sons, Thorburn & Co., Bridgeman, 
Flemming, Landreth, Briggs & Brother, and 
others ; and between them you are like a gour- 
mand, who, instead of being invited to sit 
down to one feast, has placed before him a 
dozen banquets at the same time, and is bewil- 
dered how to choose. 

As by a winter fire we turn over these dainty 
pages, what visions they conjure up to the im- 
aginative amateur ! " Conover's Colossal As- 
paragus ! " How that sounds ! but from brief 
trial I am comins: to the conclusion that it does 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 247 

not sound too large. Farther on the eye is 

startled by ''Egyptian Blood .^ " oh! 

" Egyptian blood turnip Beet, the earliest va- 
riety grown," and we breathe freer. What 
names they give these innocent useful vegeta- 
bles ! Why " Egyptian Blood " ? Who wants 
so sanguinary an association while weeding his 
early beets ? Now here is something sensible : 
"Large Flat Dutch Cabbage." That is very 
appropriate. The carrot list commences badly. 
"The Early Horn!" I hope none of my 
readers take it, early or late. Then here is 
" Carter's Incomparable Dwarf Dark Crimson 
Celery." Such a name as that certainly re- 
quires a carter. " Early Russian " or "Rush- 
in," as it is generally pronounced, is a good 
name for a fast cucumber, but I protest against 
" Blue Peter Pea." I told you the onion was 
irrepressible and supreme in every age ; for see, 
they have named the last variety discovered, 



248 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

" New Queen," and I promise you she will 
maintain her rank when so many of her degen- 
erate sisters are losing theirs. Other queens 
may frantically sway their sceptres in vain, but a 
breath from her will cause many to grow sick 
and faint. Long live the new Queen — onion. 
For the sake of our Democratic friends, I will 
add that she is described as having a " white 
skin." Here is something called Scorzonera. 
The idea of asking your youngest child if he 
would take some of that for dinner ! We com.e 
next to a squash called " Hubbard," probably 
in honor of the good old lady of that name, in 
hopes that her "cupboard" will never be 
"bare" of the delicious pies it makes. 
Strange ! here is one called the " Boston Mar- 
row." The profanity of suggesting in faintest 
allusion that the marrow of Boston enters in a 
squash ! We hardly know what we are coming 
to in the way of Tomatoes. Every year there 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 249 

are several novelties so far superior (according 
to the catalogues) to anything else known, that 
it would seem perfection might be reached in 
this vegetable, if nothing else earthy. Two or 
three years ago, we had a variety named Gen- 
eral Grant, indicating that all competitors were 
vanquished. We bought General Grant, sowed 
it, hoed it, and ate it, and w^ere satisfied. Gen- 
eral Grant didn't disappoint us — never. It was 
a good tomato, solid all the w^ay through ; and 
though not so large as some others, was very 
prolific. We hoped to "have peace" on the 
tomato question. But so far from being satis- 
fied, like the people, w^ith the great namesake 
for eight years, the seed-growers all proved 
Liberal Republicans on the tomato question, 
and every spring new candidates arc pressed 
upon us. And now, Mr. " Smith " has sent 
out a novelty that renders it almost impossible 
to wait till next July before seeing the wonder 



25© GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

in fruit. The only thing that can be done at 
present is to buy the seeds at twenty-five cents 
per half dozen or so. 

But as far as names are concerned, the vege- 
tables get off very well. It is when we turn to 
the flowers that our deepest sympathies are 
aroused. Here is a poor little plant, six inches 
high at the best, overwhelmed with " Kaulfussia 
amelloides atroviolacea." What a wrong is 
done to the pretty modest little flower ! I would 
not put this name on a label over the seed, for 
it would never dare come tip. Imagine a lisp- 
ing young lady asking a bashful young man to 
go into the garden and make her a bouquet of 
" Agrostemma," " Asperula azurea setosa," 
" Dianthus Heddewigii flore pleno atropurpure- 
us," "Phlox Drummondii Radowitzii Kerme- 
sina striata," " Helichrysum brachyrrhinchum," 
and a few more pretty little blossoms. And 
yet, Mr. Vick and others gravely offer these 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE, 25 1 

varieties, and a host of other unpronounceables, 
for our modest flower-borders, stating that they 
are "desirable for cutting." Their names are 
certainly, and might be cut back indefinitely. 
The winter fire w'ould burn out, and spring 
come and go, before we could master the cabala 
of the floral catalogues. I pounce down on the . 
Pansies, Asters, and like old friends, who have 
not put on such airs in the way of names, that 
one does not know them. But they, too, have 
caught the infection, and are coming on like 
some boys I used to know, w^ho are getting " D, 
D." and "Esq." to their names, and are no 
longer known as " Tom" or "Hal." 

But the evening wanes, our eyes grow weary, 
our minds confused between the conflicting 
claims of seeds, each one with a stronger or 
longer title to attention than its fellow. We 
wish we had a hundred acres, and a dozen gar- 
deners, and could plant each kind in rows as 



252 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

long as their names, and thus find out for cer- 
tain which were really the best. 

At last we sweep books and seductive cata- 
logues aside, lift our feet on the fender, and lean 
back in our easy-chair. Falling into a dreamy 
state, we conjure up some sort of an ideal Eden 
in which fancy is head gardener, and wishes 
wait to do its bidding. Having reached the 
strawberry-bed in our imaginary scene, we rest 
satisfied, and drop off into a doze — to awake an 
hour later, chilled and shivering. The winter 
fire has gone out, and we find a feather, rather 
than a strawberry-bed, is the proper thing. 

" The time of the singing of birds is come." 

A brass band banging away after bedtime, 
or in ancient times the voice of a Troubadour 
twanging a guitar under a window at some un- 
seasonable hour — often mistaken on first awak- 
ening no doubt for a cat — these are perhaps the 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 253 

traditional ideas of a serenade. But what lan- 
guage can portray your feelings when you are 
awakened some mild morning in March by the 
wild minstrelsy of a party of robins and blue- 
birds that, coming from you know not where, 
have taken possession of your garden. The 
long oppressive silence of winter is broken, and 
now we shall have trills, solos, duetts, and 
choruses that can only be imitated in the 
Academy of Music. 

Song is the first crop I obtain from my gar- 
den, and one of the best. The robins know I 
am a friend of theirs in spite of their taste for 
early strawberries and cherries, and when I am 
at work they are very sociable and familiar. 
One or two Avill light on raspberry stakes near, 
and sing and twitter almost as incessantly and 
intelligently as the children in their play-house 
under the great oak tree. And yet the robin's 



2 54 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

first mellow whistle in spring is a clarion call to 
duty, the opening note of the campaign. 

The making of a hot-bed may perhaps be re- 
garded as the first labor to be performed. Its 
size will depend somewhat on that of your gar- 
den, and whether you intend raising plants for 
sale. 

The frame or box on which your sash are to 
rest should be made more carefully than that 
of the mere cold frame, for the hot-bed is de- 
signed for growth instead of storage. The sash 
should run in grooves, and the boards overlap, 
so that no cold air can find access when it is 
closed. Light pine shutters, straw mats, or old 
carpet should be provided to render it still more 
secure from the cold. The pits over which the 
frames and sash are placed should be made in 
the fall, and filled up with leaves as before de- 
scribed. At any time from the first to the 
middle of March, these leaves can be thrown 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 255 

out, but kept dry as possible, and fresh manure 
from the horse stable mixed with them in equal 
proportions, a'nd all well shaken together in a 
compact conical heap. In a few days it will 
commence heating, as can be seen from the 
vapor thrown off. It should then be shaken 
out and piled up again, and after two or three 
days a second fermentation will take place, and 
now it can be placed evenly and tramped down in 
the bottom of the pit to the depth of two and a 
half feet, and seven inches of soil spread over it. 
This brings the surface about two feet from the 
glass. Before sowing the seeds it is better to 
wait three or four days, as the manure may 
heat so violently that it would destroy the ten- 
der germs. When a thermometer placed in the 
soil would recede to eighty-five, then seed can 
be sown. The earth in the beds should be very 
fine and rich, and may be kept in some cellar, 
or more conveniently in a cold frame covered 



256 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

with leaves. Early cabbage, cauliflower, and 
lettuce should be sown first. The seed of pan- 
sies, petunias, phlox, asters, ten weeks' stock, 
and all the Dianthus tribe can be sov/n also. 
I do not think it well, usually, to plant toma- 
toes, pepper, and egg-plant seed before the 
20th of March, as they are so impatient of cold. 
And these last should be planted in one end of 
the hot-bed by themselves, as they need less 
airing, and more covering than their hardier 
neighbors. Great care must be exercised in 
preventing the plants from becoming chilled 
cold nights and wintry days, and even more 
vigilance is required in seeing that they are 
properly aired and hardened in their growth. 
By leaving the sash closed with a hot morning 
sun shining on them, I have seen an entire bed 
ruined in an hour. And from want of proper 
airing and hardening, the plants in very many 
hot-beds are so tender and spindling as to be 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 257 

almost worthless. When set in the open 
ground they wilt right down. In the hands 
of a careful gardener who can give it his 
own supervision, and who carefully transfers 
the tender plants from it to a cold frame, and 
from thence to the open ground, a hot-bed is 
very useful. But in our March weather it 
requires considerable judgment and constant 
watchfulness. To tell the truth, I make little 
use of them, save for forcing lettuce in March. 
For this purpose I find them excellent, and 
have lettuce growing nicely now, the last of 
February, though the thermometer has marked 
six below zero during the present week. 

As I have shown, I winter over in cold frames 
hardy vegetables ; and even for raising the ten- 
der ones in spring, I prefer the ordinary cold 
frame, with ground made fine and very rich, 
sowing the seed of hardy plants early in March, 

and of the tender ones the first of April, and 
17 



258 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

having no other heat than that of the sun on 
the glass. My tomato plants so raised may not 
be so large as those from a hot-bed, but they 
are hardy, stocky, and go right ahead, vi^hen 
set in the open ground. My friend Mr. Skene 
often supplements my home supply most liber- 
ally, he being furnished the means and possess- 
ing the skill to do everything in the best possi- 
ble vv^ay. 

In many localities the gardeners can dispose 
of a large number of surplus plants if carefully 
grown, and of varieties that they can recom- 
mend. I have not done very much in this way, as 
I have not had the conveniences ; but in '71, one 
thousand five hundred and twenty-eight tomato 
plants were sold for sixteen dollars and seventy- 
three cents ; while thirteen dollars and twenty 
cents were received for cabbage and cauliflower 
plants, and a much larger sum for the same in 
72. 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 259 

With the first of March commences the ut- 
most activity with the cold frames. The sun 
has now gained such power, that so hardy a 
vegetable as lettuce will commence growing 
under glass. The leaves are therefore thrown 
out of the frames, and the soil, made very rich 
and fine last fall, is now heated up by keeping 
the sash on tightly a few days, and then set 
out in plants which we have been keeping in 
the storage frames. As soon as these are thus 
emptied, they are forked over, enriched, and 
filled with plants for heading also. By the 
middle of the month the sash can be taken off 
the storage frames altogether, and all your glass, 
save that used in starting new seeds, employed 
in forcing lettuce and radishes for market. 
Even in this winter o^ '73, the severest we have 
ever known, I expect to carry safely through 
eight thousand plants, and by March 15th to 
have at least two thousand set out for heading 



2 6o GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE, 

in cold frames. On the 22d of February I had 
two hundred and fifty growing finely. As soon 
as the frost is out, a warm, sheltered place in 
the open garden can be filled with the hardy 
lettuce plants from the cold frames, and I have 
had these mature for market in May. Cabbage 
and cauliflower wintered over can also be set 
out in the open garden as soon as the ground 
can be worked. In forcing lettuce, great 
watchfulness is required. Of course, you want 
to keep up the utmost degree of heat without 
injuring the plants, as this brings them into 
market sooner. But too great heat may dam- 
age if not spoil your crop. The danger in- 
creases as the leaves in their growth approach 
the glass. Whenever the sun shines, it is safer 
to push the sash down a little, even early in the 
morning, and give an increasing amount of 
outer air as the sun grows higher. In the 
afternoon gradually push the sash up, and be- 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 26 1 

fore there is any chill close up tightly. On 
cold, cloudy, windy days the sash need not be 
touched. If there should come warm rains, 
strip the sash off altogether ; and if not, sprinkle 
often tepid water, as this greatly hastens the 
growth. 

The spring of '71 was very mild and open, 
and I had lettuce under glass fit for use the 
17th of March. It was not full grown by any 
means, but pretty fairly so, and by the 24th it 
was selling rapidly. My sales for that season 
amounted to sixty-one dollars — averaging 
about four cents a head. In the spring of '72 
my lettuce sold for ninety-one dollars and 
eighty-two cents. I have a third more glass 
in '73 than ever before, and hope for corre- 
spondingly large receipts. After the first of 
June the demand for this vegetable is not 
worth mentioning, and the main crop is forced 
under glass. 



262 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

To a limited extent I have found parsnips 
and salsify or oyster plant profitable crops. 
The earlier the seed is sown after the frost is 
out of the ground, the better ; the salsify 
in rows one foot apart, and plants three inches 
in the row ; parsnips in rows fifteen inches 
apart, and thinned out so as to stand four inches 
from each other. The soil where they are grown 
should be made rich and deep, and good clean 
cultivation will insure a large crop. In No- 
vember, what are needed for winter can be dug, 
put in barrels, and covered with damp earth, to 
keep them from wilting ; then stored in a cool 
cellar. But the majority of the roots can be 
left in the open ground till spring, for freezing 
does them good. As soon as frost is out, they 
can be dug as required ; and as vegetables 
are so scarce in March and April, they 
usually find a ready sale. In the spring of 
'71 I had three and a quarter bushels of 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 263 

parsnips to dispose of, but for these, sold in 
small quantities, Thomas received six dollars 
and eighty-eight cents. The salsify was sold 
in bunches, ten or twelve roots in a bunch, 
and seven dollars and eighteen cents were ob- 
tained for seventy-seven bunches. Where the 
latter vegetable is appreciated and meets with 
ready sale, it can be made very profitable. 
The bulk of the crop should be so stored 
that it can be sold during the winter. If 
placed in a cellar, it is very apt to wilt and 
become worthless, and therefore should be 
stored out of doors. One simple way of doing 
this is to cut a trench one foot in depth and 
width, through some dry, well-drained ground, 
and then pack the roots in this, standing as 
they grew. The earth may be gathered slightly 
over them, so that the green tops will partially 
show through it. They should not be so stored 
till just before severe freezing weather com- 



264 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

mences, and they can be so covered with leaves 
and straw as to be accessible any time during 
the winter. If parsnips or other roots are 
raised in large quantities, they had better be 
stored in pits out of doors, as most cellars, 
either from heat or dryness, cause them to 
decay or wilt. 

Once more I will return to the onion, and then 
its delicate aroma shall no longer breathe through 
these pages. But since it is one of the most 
profitable crops of the garden, and can be put 
in the ground even before the frost is out in the 
spring, it must find mention here again. The 
beds that have been wintered over should be 
gradually but early uncovered. The plants are 
hardy to the cold, but the tops are apt to 
smother and decay if anything rests closely on 
them when the weather grows mild. They will 
commence growing as soon as the frost gives 
them the slightest chance, and in '71 I had them 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 265 

fit for market by March 25th. When I have 
not a sufficient number started the previous fall, 
I obtain a very early supply for market by put- 
ting out refuse and sprouted onions, purchased 
for a trifle at the stores. No matter how large 
or how far gone they are, if the germ is sound. 
If the sprouts are long and spindling, cut them 
off, about an inch above the bulb. Set them 
out in very rich ground, as soon as you have 
even three inches of soil above the frost. I 
have them put in rows, six inches apart, and 
close enough to touch each other. They will 
commence growing at once, and in about four 
weeks will be ready for market. Their large 
green tops, while young and tender, are highly 
valued by those who are not much in the kissing 
line. Thomas says that he does not sell many 
to young ladies. But from the demand, I should 
judge that kissing is but a limited source of hap- 
piness, while onions arc quite the reverse ; so 



266 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

wishing to add as largely as possible to the en- 
joyment of the world, I plant much of my gar- 
den in this secret of human joy. A very emi- 
nent Divine once told me, that this sacred vege- 
table contributed greatly to the increase and 
nourishment of the brain. May not this ac- 
count for the general demand for it ? People 
oppressed by the need of brains instinctively 
turn to a source of supply. But I can assure 
the prospective gardener, whether he has need of 
brains or not, if he has need of cash, here is a 
good way of supplying it. The earlier in spring 
he puts out his '' sets," and " top onions," or 
sows the seed, the better ; for those started first 
seem to do the best. In '71, one thousand 
eight hundred and sixty-five bunches were sold 
in their green state for ninety-two dollars and 
forty-four cents. Also six bushels and eleven 
quarts, realizing sixteen dollars and ninety cents. 
In addition, four and one-half bushels of sets, or 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 267 

little onions for seed, were sold for twenty-three 
dollars and sixty-two cents. In summing up, 
therefore, even if the onion has not done much 
for me in the way of brains, I cannot complain. 
Radishes, also, demand attention as early as 
possible in the market garden. I find them a 
profitable crop in the cold frame, and expect to 
sow quite a large space in this way, while the 
snow averages two feet in depth over the gar- 
den. By the loth of April, they ought to be 
ready for market. They can be sown under 
glass in rows five inches apart, and the ground 
should be very fine and rich. I also aim to sow 
my main crop out of doors, in March if possible, 
on warm, light soil ; and I find that it pays to 
fill up the shallow drills in which the seed is 
sown, with some black, well-rotted manure. 
This draws the sun, and stimulates rapid growth ; 
and unless a radish grows quickly, it is worth- 
less. It is rather an uncertain crop, as it has 



268 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 



serious enemies to contend with. In the first 
place, as soon as it shows itself above the 
ground, a little black beetle or flea attacks it, 
and will often destroy first plantings in a few 
hours. I have tried soot and other things, but 
have found no remedy so effective as little 
chickens. Put a coop on each side of your rad- 
ish bed, and let the little chicks run over it, and 
they will soon clean it thoroughly of the pest. 
This same black flea will attack early turnips, 
cabbage, and indeed almost anything green 
early in the season ; and where I have but one 
or two flocks of chickens, I have Thomas move 
them every night, to some point where the 
"wicked flea" is specially destructive, and in 
the morning the devourers are themselves de- 
voured. This is in accordance with Nature's 
theory, that one thing should eat another thing, 
and so keep the ratio of existence nicely ad- 
justed. That the theory may be proved correct 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 269 

in its last analysis, men and women in America 
do not need cannibals, for care and worry do 
the work much more effectually. 

Another and still more formidable difficulty, 
in radish cultivation, is a little white worm that 
attacks the growing root. The only remedy 
seems to be to employ new or different soil every 
year, making it so rich as to secure such a rapid 
growth that the worm has no time for its dep- 
redations. But I lose a great many in this way 
every season. Besides, there is a great differ- 
ence in radish seed, especially that of the " Long 
Scarlet Short Tpp," which often proves all top. 
I have found great differences in seed of the 
same name, some tending to produce large 
roots promptly, and some tending never to pro- 
duce them. I do not think that seedsmen can 
always know of these differences themselves. I 
buy my seed in small packages of several deal- 
ers, and when I have a package producing the 



2 70 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

best and earliest, purchase largely of that. If 
kept in a cool, dry place, the seed will remain 
good for several seasons, as it retains its vitality 
for five years. 

My sales in '71 were not as large as usual, 
but amounted to nine hundred and sixteen 
bunches, realizing thirty-five dollars and nine 
cents, I have grown them between beets and 
other vegetables, but find that, unless you 
have a prompt sale for them the day they are 
ready, they are apt, by remaining a few days, 
to so injure the crops they are grown with as 
to be unprofitable. In a small local market 
you cannot sell out at once. With your best 
management, a week or so after j^ou have rad- 
ishes every one with a small garden has them 
also, and the demand drops off rapidly. I sow 
my earhest beds where I shall put egg-plants, 
tomatoes, and such late tender vegetables, and 
they are out of the way in time for these to be 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 2 "J I 

set out in May. The first week in April I also 
have hills for melons, cucumbers, etc., formed 
about four feet apart, by mixing a shovel or 
two of light well-rotted manure with the soil and 
rounding it up for the sun to warm and dry out. 
The seed for the hills is not planted till from 
fifth to the tenth of May, but the ground between 
the hills can be sown thickly with radishes, and 
long before the melon or other vines want the 
space, they are out of the way. The earliest, 
and those grown in cold frames, will bring five 
cents per bunch ; but when they fall below two 
cents, they do not pay, sold in small quantities. 

March brings many and varied labors in the 
garden. Grape-vines should be trimmed if they 
were not last fall, and the pruning-knife should be 
busy generally. Tools, seeds, plants, trees, 
should be ready, or ordered, so that when good 
weather fairly opens, not a moment need be lost. 

When we shall get to work in the open ground 



272 GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 

March, ''jy, it is hard to say. Now, at the open- 
ing of the month, snow covers the ground to the 
depth of two feet, and the title of one of Bul- 
wer's novels, slightly changed, might well be ad- 
dressed to Nature. "Whatzf///" she "do with 
it" between now and April ist ? March prom- 
ises to maintain its proverbial bad character ; and 
yet this month, so universally inveighed against, 
is to me one of the most fascinating. Its darkest 
days are full of hope and the knowledge of the 
near approach of spring. We laugh at winter's 
gloomiest frowns, since the old tyrant cannot 
long maintain them, and must soon abdicate in 
favor of a gentler sovereign. Already spring, 
like a young queen consort, tempers his harsh- 
ness, and soon she will occupy the throne alone. 
Increasingly often there are bright, warm, sug- 
gestive days when the decrepit tyrant cannot 
appear, and she, unchecked, sways the sceptre, 
all sweetness, grace, and benignity. 



GARDENING OVER A WINTER FIRE. 273 

Or to change the figure, this season, so un- 
certain and variable, now smihng and gentle, 
now harsh and forbidding, reminds one of coy, 
cold beauty about to yield to love's suit in spite 
of herself. She tries, but cannot maintain her 
frowns, for love softens her heart like the subtle 
south wind relaxing the frozen earth. Though 
her moods are abrupt and trying in their changes 
they are followed by remorseful tears, just as rain 
one day seeks to banish the frost and snow of 
the preceding. Her temper is often high and 
uncertain, her words a little sharp and blustering, 
like March winds ; but wait patiently till all has 
blown over, and see how softly and sweetly she 
will smile on you. But don't presume ; don't 
felicitate yourself too highly ; there will proba- 
bly be a change. Patient wooing and wait- 
ing shall be well rewarded by the tearful peni- 
tence and sunny smiles of April, and warmer 

affection of May and June. 
18 



XV. 

APRIL 

"Bestir, bestir." 

No time for sentiment now, for Nature is not 
only thoroughly awake, but up and busy, and 
we shall do well if we keep pace with her. 
Seemingly, there are a dozen things to be done 
at once, these mild April days, but one thing at 
a time is the secret of progress, with some 
modification. Where you have several in help, 
one or two can often work to better advantage 
at a certain task than half a dozen, and if you 
employ boys, the less they help each other the 
more they accomplish. 

In the first place, tie up your grape-vines ; 
don't leave them sprawling on the ground till 



APRIL. 275 

the buds start. In this respect my words have 
all the authority belonging to those of a certain 
temperance lecturer, who, in order to be graphic 
and forcible, occasionally got drunk, that he 
might speak from experience. 

Fruit-trees and grape-vines can now again be 
set out, and the earlier it is done the better. 
This is specially true in regard to raspberries, or 
else the buds or germs that are to make the bear- 
ing canes for another season will be so far started 
as to render it impossible to prevent their break- 
ing off. If a full supply of all kinds of fruit were 
not put out the preceding fall, we would urge that 
it be done in spring, and if done early and care- 
fully, and the ground kept mulched and moist 
around the plants and trees during the hot dry 
weather, the gardener will have no cause to 
complain. 

For certainty of success there is no time for 
putting out strawberry plants like April. If 



276 APRIL. 

done early in the month, with ordinary care, 
they are sure to grow. I aim to set out one or 
two new beds every spring. When you are 
buying new and expensive varieties this is the 
time, by all means. 

It is a pleasure and often a source of profit to 
try a few of the novelties, and some extraordi- 
nary ones (on paper) are offered for '73 (vide 
catalogues and advertisements). Certain new 
kinds are offered at the modest sum of fifty 
cents each, and one or two of these I shall try. 
A single plant is all you want. From that you 
can obtain fifty that will bear the following sea- 
son, and so in a small way can thoroughly test 
the value of the variety. If it is what you want, 
you can raise enough new plants from the fifty 
during the second summer to set out all you 
wish, and have many to spare. It is therefore 
interesting to try in this inexpensive manner 
some of the large, new, highly recommended 



APRIL. 277 

kinds, as among them you may find something 
just adapted to your soil and locality. But in 
setting out largely, obtain some well-known 
variety, that your neighbors recommend from 
trial. Prepare and enrich your ground 
thoroughly, and if pressed for room, the spaces 
of two feet between the strawberry rows can be 
occupied by radishes, lettuce, onion sets, or 
spring-sown spinach. Last spring I had early 
beets sown between the rows of a strawberry- 
bed. The beets were marketed in June and July, 
and by fall the strawberry rows were closely 
filled with new strong plants, which promise a 
very large crop this year. Still, where ground 
is plenty, cultivation is more easy and rapid 
when everything is grown by itself, with wide 
spaces between, and only very rich soil, with 
careful culture, will bear crowding. 

Asparagus and rhubarb roots should also be 
set out as early as possible in April. As the 



278 APRIL. 

former may remain in bearing on the same 
ground for twenty-five or thirty years, the most 
careful preparation is required, and yet we do 
not think there is any need of going to the 
great expense that many indulge in. If a small 
bed is to be made in a garden, let it be trenched 
and enriched to the depth of two feet. In the 
spring of '72 I put out quite a large bed of Con- 
over's colossal asparagus. I obtained the roots 
of R. H. Allen & Co., and do not remember 
whether they were one or two years old, but 
they were of fair size and in good order. I put 
them out in some of my best ground, in the fol- 
lowing simple way : Commencing at one end of 
the bed that had been well prepared, my gar- 
dener opened a trench about fourteen inches 
deep and slightly slanting on one side. The 
plants were then leaned against the slanting 
side, one foot apart from each other, and 
enough good soil thrown around to partially 



APRIL. 279 

cover and keep them in their place, and a small 
shovel of rotted manure given to each plant. 
Stepping back two feet, another trench was 
opened, and the plants treated in the same man- 
ner, and in this way the entire bed was soon 
planted, and the soil over the plants (which 
were covered about four inches) was left smooth 
and untramped. Although a fine crop of beets 
was raised between these rows, the asparagus 
made a very vigorous growth, and if I should 
decide to cut it the second year from planting 
(as I probably shall, since it is on leased land), 
there wnll be a fair crop. When the very best 
results are aimed at, and the purpose is to main- 
tain the bed in good productiveness as long 
as possible, it is best not to cut the young 
asparagus shoots till the third year. 

All the cultivation required is to keep the 
ground clean and mellow during the summer. 
In field culture the rows had better be three feet 



2 50 APRIL. 

apart, so that a cultivator can run between them. 
In the fall the bed should be mowed off, and 
those tops that are not full of seed make an 
excellent covering for such hardy plants as 
require but slight protection. Cover the bed if 
small, or the rows if large, with three inches of 
manure, before hard freezing weather com- 
mences in fall, and your asparagus so treated 
will not fail to give good satisfaction. It is a 
vegetable that always sells, and I doubt if the 
market ever will be overstocked. 

Perhaps there is no crop that the possessor of 
a garden near a small local market could grow 
with greater prospects of success than this, if he 
has the patience to put it out in the right way 
and take good care of it. Being in itself such a 
favorite, and coming when there is so little 
variety for the table, it always sells high. It 
will adapt itself to any soil that is well enriched 
and kept so, and when treated in accordance 



APRIL. 251 

with its nature — that is, given ground where it 
grows with its native vigor — it makes a large 
return. In its wild state it flourishes along the 
coast in certain regions of Europe and Asia, and 
since its introduction to this country, has found 
its way in some instances to the beaches and 
marshes of our own shores. Hints from its 
history and taste should be taken, and we 
should seek to give it a soil suited to its peculiar 
habit. If we have on our places a sandy alluvial 
piece of ground and will deepen and enrich it, 
we would have no trouble in raising large 
paying crops of asparagus. A swamp that can 
be thoroughly drained so that no water would 
stand at any time of the year, would also make a 
fine place for a late crop. Indeed, great ad- 
vantage would be secured by such variety of 
soil as would give a succession. Some very 
warm location with a light sandy soil might be 
selected for the early growth, and a cooler. 



APRIL. 



moister soil for the main crop. Of course the 
earliest would bring, in most places, by far the 
largest price. But I find that in my local 
market the fluctuations of price are not very 
great. I cannot, to any extent, reach the New 
York fancy retail mark, even for articles sold 
in this way, nor do they often fall below a fair 
paying return. I am well satisfied that a large 
bed of asparagus v/ould give a profitable crop 
that could be depended on every year. One 
naturally hesitates in putting out a crop of 
this character on leased ground. It is the same 
as setting out grape-vines, and you cannot 
expect much return before the third year. And 
yet I have done this, believing that but one or 
two crops of so fine a vegetable avouM repay all 
trouble. But if one has bought a place to sell 
again, and therefore their stay may be transient 
or at least uncertain, we would advise them to 
put out a bed by all means. One good crop 



APRIL. 283 

would nearly if not quite compensate for outlay, 
and an asparagus bed ought to be regarded as 
a permanent improvement like an orchard, and 
should add to the value of a place. 

Those of us whose gardens are not near the 
coast, will find salt very beneficial to our aspar- 
agus. Two pounds to the square yard can 
be scattered over the ground very early in 
spring, as soon as the ground is forked over, 
and the rain will wash it down. While helping 
the vegetable, it will disgust the bugs, worms, 
and weeds generally, they having no sympathy 
with the "salt of the earth." 

But with rhubarb a small local market can 
easily be more than supplied. I have about 
twice as much as we need, but as it takes up 
but little room, and requires not a great deal of 
attention, I let it grow, intending to try to in- 
crease the demand by selling it cheaply. 

As this vecretable also stands a number of 



284 APRIL. 

years on the same ground, thorough prepara- 
tion should be made for it. The soil cannot be 
made too rich, and every spring it must be 
abundantly stimulated ; and this, with keeping 
it free from weeds, is all that is required. I 
have Thomas put a good shovel of manure on 
the crown of every plant in November, and 
this keeps them warm, and starts them early in 
spring. The ground should be dug around 
them as soon as the frost is out. 

The earlier new plants are set out the better. 
They can be procured at any seed store, and, 
for a local market, it is best to order the largest 
variety, even if it is a little later. The plants 
should be set so that the crown, or bud, is 
barely under ground. Make the rows four feet 
apart, and let the roots stand three feet from 
each other in the row. Its time of readiness 
for market will vary with the season. In 
'71 my sales commenced April 28th, and for 



. APRIL. 285 

two hundred and seventeen bunches, twenty 
dollars and fifty cents were received ; while 
in '72, it was May 8th before any were sold ; 
but the crop was larger and better. If 
speculators in sugar would only send all 
families in the country a dozen or more rhu- 
barb plants, there is no telling what fortunes 
might be made. I make this saccharine sug- 
gestion to avert any charge of acidity of style ; 
but if this hint is followed, and fortunes are 
made, I shall expect my share, and no investi- 
gations. 

Quinces can now be set out also to good 
advantage. Instead of letting them grow into 
scraggly bushes, it is much better to prune 
them into shapely pyramidal trees (but please 
do not inquire into my practice). Currant and 
gooseberry cuttings can still be put out, as 
directed, in the fall, or the earth heaped up 



286 APRIL. 

about those designed for division into new 
plants, but it must be done early. 

Those who live in Virginia, and South, 
should set out their fig-trees now. When 
chaplain at Fortress Monroe, I raised them 
with the same ease that we do currants here ; 
and the fruit is such a favorite one with me, 
that I shall try them in our latitude this spring, 
laying them down and burying them like rasp- 
berries in the fall. 

I raise mainly the dwarf varieties of peas, and 
having tried several, I have at last settled doAvn 
on two varieties — the "Tom Thumb " for earliest 
crop, and McLean's Little Gem for second. 
The first is very hardy, and can be planted as 
soon as the frost is out of the ground — the earlier 
the better. It grows about eight inches high, 
and if not planted too closely in the row is very 
prolific. I have had them and the tall Marrow- 
fat growing at the same time in my garden, and 



APRIL. 287 

found that a vine of the Tom Thumb produced 
as many pods as a vine of the tall variety stand- 
ing between four and five feet high. The rows 
of Tom Thumb can be planted one foot apart, 
the others four feet, and require brush at that. 
But to get a paying crop from the dwarfs they 
must be planted early on very rich soil. I find 
it pays well to drill in well-rotted manure with 
the seed. McLean's Little Gems are not quite 
so hardy, and should not be planted till after the 
soil becomes a little warmer and drier. When 
ground is scarce and valuable, as with me, I find 
these dwarf varieties pay much the best, as I 
can plant them between other crops, such as 
raspberries, sweet corn, lima beans, cucumbers, 
etc. The Tom Thumb, if sown very early, will 
mature about the 20th of June in our region, 
and as the pods all fill out at once the vines can 
be pulled up as they are picked, and thus they 
are out of the way of the crops they were grow- 



ing between. I always fill up my tomato ground 
this way the last of March or first of April. 
One of the simplest methods is to open a double 
row three and a half feet apart. This double 
row consists of two shallow trenches three or 
four inches deep and five inches apart. In these 
the peas are sown so as to stand about an inch 
from each other, and slightly covered. If then 
black, well-rotted manure is scattered over them, 
it will draw the sun and greatly stimulate their 
growth. By the loth of May, tomato plants 
can be set out between these double rovv^s, and 
one crop will not interfere with the other, for 
long before the tomatoes cover the ground, the 
peas will be gathered and sold. Of course this 
will only pay in small gardens where cultivation 
with a plough is not practised. I also aimed by 
planting McLean's Little Gems, and some later 
kinds, to have a succession of crops ; and as 
they were mostly sold in small quantities to 



APRIL. 289 

those who valued quahty, eighteen bushels and 
fourteen quarts brought the large sum of forty- 
three dollars and sixty cents. For field culture, 
where ground is plenty, and not very rich, the 
tall kinds, like Dan O'Burk, McLean's Advan- 
cer, and Champion of England, are doubtless the 
best. But don't hire your men to pick them by 
the day. I gave an Irishman twelve shillings 
last summer to pick about fifty cents' worth of 
peas. 

He would be little better than a heathen (agri- 
culturally) who raised no peas for home supply ; 
but we have strong doubts as to the profitableness 
of this vegetable for market. I think you can 
raise more strawberries to the acre than you can 
peas. You can pick a bushel of the fruit as soon, 
and the latter will bring from six to ten dollars a 
bushel, while for the former you often cannot 
get one dollar. For a small local market it will 

pay well to plant the dwarfs between other 
19 



290 APRIL. 

crops, thus making your ground do double 
duty. Or growing the best and largest kinds, 
like the Champion of England, giving them 
brush and extra care, will compensate the gar- 
dener, if he is not limited in land, and can ob- 
tain a fair price through the season. For the 
choice wrinkled varieties, picked young and de- 
liciously fresh, people ought to be willing to pay 
double price. With the majority who buy at 
market, however, a peck of peas is a peck of 
peas, whether it came from Long Island or 
Norfolk a week ago, or that morning from a 
neighboring garden, and price . alone is con- 
sidered. 

There is no use of tiying to grow this vege- 
table on a large scale, unless you are near some 
village, and can employ a dozen pickers or more, 
the day it is ready. The pods will become un- 
salable almost as soon as small fruit if left on 
the vines, and the difference of one day in the 



APRIL, 



291 



market price may be that of utter loss instead of 
good profit. In our region very early and very 
late crops sell for the largest sums. 

For further pea-ticulars, see Mr. Burr's valu- 
able book, in which he reduces one hundred and 
sixty-two varieties named to only seventy-three, 
and these he describes. 



XVI. 

GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTURAL CONVERSION. 

During the first warm still days of this month, 
as soon as the buds begin to swell, grafting 
should be performed. The operation is neither 
so agreeable nor successful on cold, windy days. 
This simple but very useful labor of spring can 
be learned by once witnessing it, better than 
from any description ; and in every locality there 
are adepts in the art, who will either do the work 
or show the amateur how to perform it himself, 
which is better. On almost every place there 
are vigorous young trees grown from chance 
seed, but this wild or natural fruit is of but lit- 
tle value. By a few grafts we can put all this 
native vigor of growth into some of the most 



GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTURAL CONVERSION. 293 

approved luscious varieties. Why cannot re- 
formers and teachers work more on this princi- 
ple ? With multitudes, repression seems the 
favorite method of getting the world right. 
"Thou shalt not" enact government. "It is 
not proper," cries society with elevated eye- 
brows. "You mustn't do this, don't do that," 
constantly falls on the little children's ears ; and 
preaching consists more largely in telling men 
what they ought not to do, than in what they 
may and should do. Nice little boys and girls, 
that were started rightly from the first, and had 
grace "budded in " with their mother's milk, 
get along very well. They go out into the world 
like trees from the rows in the nursery, straight, 
pruned, labelled, and warranted, though often a 
little weakly. Still they have much to be thank- 
ful for, and all they have to do is to grow as 
they have been directed. But society is full of 
boys and girls that have come up on " their own 



2 94 GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTURAL CONVERSION. 

hook," to use their own vernacular; just as we 
find wild apple, cherry, and pear trees growing 
along fences, in thickets and all sorts of unex- 
pected places. 

As a general thing, these fortuitous youth are 
morally not elected or highly favored, and when 
mature enough to bear the fruit of characteristic 
deeds, we say : 

The less of that kind the better. 

But what shall we do with them ? Repression, 
cutting back, only increases their wild growth. 
To be sure we can dig them out, root and 
branch, and destroy them ; and this was society's 
ancient course with those unruly members who 
would not grow morally, mentally, and religi- 
ously in the narrow little mould of the times. 
But this will not answer now, much as some 
good people would like to try it. 

But what shall we do ? Nature teaches us. 

A few feet away from my parsonage-door, a 



GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTURAL CONVERSION. 295 

young cherry sapling took a notion to grow. 
Nobody planted it, nobody wanted it there. 
It was rather in the way, and how it managed 
to escape being trampled down or cut down, is 
a mystery akin to that of the life and vigor of 
some children against whom everything seems 
to conspire. Before I realized it, there was 
flourishing right before my door a tall, shapely 
sapling, but in a state of nature rather than one 
of grace, and commencing to bear villanously 
small and bitter fruit. 

Something must be done. To let it grow on 
its rampant style, and destroy with its baneful 
shade two saintly little pear-trees standing near, 
would not answer. To dig it out would be a 
mean, cowardly way of meeting the question, 
besides being unscriptural. Indeed, my reputa- 
tion as a clergyman was at stake. If I could 
not convert this little horticultural sinner grow- 
ing right under my nose, what impression could 



296 GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTURAL CONVERSION. 

I hope to make on the unregenerate world at 
large ? 

Not far off, there was a tree of large, splendid 
ox-hearts. Cutting a scion or twig, four inches 
long, of the preceding summer's growth, from 
this, I carefully grafted the main stem of the 
child of nature ; but made it a point to leave a 
few little branches on which the young blood 
(sap, I should say) could expend some of its 
superabundant vitality. 

Here is another point where reformers bring 
in their everlasting repression. Even when they 
give some irrepressible young sinner good 
wholesome work to do, they insist on his doing 
that and nothing else. It is the same as if they 
required that the old life of the tree should cease 
at once, and every drop of sap go into the graft. 
It can't do it, and it won't. Leave some little 
branches to grow with the graft a year or so, 
gradually pruning them out, and throwing the 



GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTURAL CONVERSION. 297 

whole strength into the increasing graft. The 
tree will submit kindly to this considerate treat- 
ment, though it will not stand a square cut from 
sinner to saint, but right through its bark, every- 
where will throw out buds of the old stock with 
resentful frequency and power. I do not know 
how it is with my brethren, but I find the same 
principle holds good in the parish. 

At any rate, this treatment was most successful 
on the subject described, and I gradually in- 
duced all its abounding vigor to go into the 
graft alone, and last summer it bore some of the 
largest, finest cherries I ever saw. 

This suggests a very serious blunder I once 
made, while seeking to bring about a certain 
horticultural reformation. In this case the tree 
was past the sapling stage, and might be de- 
scribed in its early prime, reminding one of a 
young man at the age of twenty-five. 

Indeed, it did remind me of several young 



298 GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTURAL CONVERSION. 

men, and young ladies too, that I knew of, who 
Avere well educated, abounding in health and 
strength, but whose lives bid fair to be as use- 
less as that of my cherry-tree. Those of us who 
regard present existence as something more than 
a " play spell," often look very wistfully and re- 
gretfully on the waste of human vitality around 
us. The world seems to us like a garden that 
might be abundantly productive of fruits so 
precious, that angels would store them in heav- 
enly garners ; and yet it is ready to perish for 
lack of weeding and cultivation. 

So it appeared to the Divine Husbandman, 
and He commands all to labor in His vineyard. 

With what just pride ladies have shown me 
some rose-bush, geranium, or calla lily, that 
they have nursed through the cold winter, till in 
early spring they were rewarded by a fragrant 
bloom of floral gratitude ! How often I have 
gone with a happy amateur, to witness some 



GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTUKAL CONVERSION. 299 

unusual success achieved in his garden ! If we 
were all amateurs in the vineyard of the Lord, 
throwing our hearts into the work of stimulat- 
ing and training character into symmetrical, 
fruitful, deathless life, how this wilderness world 
would blossom ! Too often we are like the hire- 
ling, whose aim seems merely to " put in the 
day" and get his "penny." But plants and 
human souls are alike in this, that they feel 
and recognize the touch of love ; and the mysti- 
cal and material garden both thrive doubly well 
under the care of those who work con aviore^ 
rather than officially. 

But the saddest part of it all is, that the ma- 
jority will not work at all in the way of pro- 
ducing anything of real value. They are like 
my cherry-tree, and all their native vigor and 
activity results in that which adds nothing to 
the well-being of the world. 

What would I not give for the physical 



300 GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTURAL CONVERSION. 

strength and health of some of the young men 
above referred to, whose days are spent in 
smoking, reading questionable novels, dressing, 
dancing, flirting, driving, card-playing, etc. 

With the exception of smoking (perhaps), the 
same occupations fill the days of multitudes of 
ladies. The result of their lives, put in a mathe- 
matical form, would be something as follows : 

Mr. Augustus Le Grand = froth. 

Miss Laura De Flirte = froth. 

The world — both = to a garden with two 
weeds pulled out. 

The parties themselves, if honest 2ind educated, 
would admit this summing of their lives to be 
correct. It's rather strange that they are so 
contented, in view of the truth. 

In the above light the cynical philosopher 
may justly regard those who, in a world so full 
of work, and in such need of work of all kinds, 
aim to be only idlers. On the Lycurgan prin- 



GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTURAL CONVERSION. 30I 

ciple of anything for the good of the state, 
they would be quietly strangled. 

But the spirit of Christianity is opposite to all 
this, and leads us to look at this class as I did 
at my thrifty but worse than useless cherry- 
tree, whose fruit was only a large pit with a bit- 
ter skin drawn over it. If its abundant vitality, 
however, could be turned into useful channels 
— that is, into grafts of some excellent variety, — 
how much better thus to utilize life by conver- 
sion to noble ends, than to destroy it ? 

Early in April, therefore, every branch of 
sufficient size, from the top down, was grafted ; 
and in due time they were nearly all growing 
finely, and I felt that I should now have a 
practical convert standing before my house, that 
would tend to inspire general confidence in my 
ministry. 

But now comes in my irrational blunder, and 
one that I fear is too common on the part of 



302 GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTURAL CONVERSION. 

reformers, as before stated. I had left a good 
many small branches scattered about the tree, 
but when the grafts commenced growing, I 
resolved that all the strength should go into 
them, that the old wild life should cease at once, 
and that I should have a cherry-tree saint from 
the start. Just as we often say to people that 
we are trying to lead to better things : 

"You must do everything that is right, and 
nothing that is wrong." 

So I said to my great rampant young tree, 
you must put all your power into those little 
scions five inches long, and develop those. All 
branches of your former doings must be stopped. 

And what the result ? Why, the shock was 
too great ; the transition too sharp and short ; 
and the tree, utterly discouraged seemingly, 
gave up in despair and died. 

We read Paul's exhortation to " Grow in 
grace" as if it were "Jump into grace." 



GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTURAL CONVERSION. 303 

Nature, human and horticultural, improves by 
growth, and synods, councils, and reformers 
cannot change this Divine law. I am now satis- 
fied that my wild young blade of a tree might 
have been converted into a most fruitful mem- 
ber of the garden ; but it stood a long time a 
blasted monument of my blundering zeal, for I 
let it remain as a warning. 

This subject of grafting, or horticultural con- 
version, is very suggestive, and has many analo- 
gies to moral experience. The earlier in life it 
takes place, the readier the growth and the 
better the chances, is a truism in both cases. 
Still, trees quite advanced in life can often be 
grafted to great advantage, and where space is 
limited, and trees of necessity must be few, quite 
a variety can soon be secured by putting in 
scions of different kinds. For instance, on the 
south side of an apple-trcc, some good early or 
"harvest" variety might be grafted in the 



304 GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTURAL CONVERSION. 

branches, a fall apple on the west side, and a 
late winter apple on the remaining boughs ; 
gradually, as we have shown, the whole strength 
of the tree could be thrown into these grafts, and 
the different kinds would grow amicably from 
one stem ; indicating that a good man can be 
useful in more ways than one. 

The same is true of a pear or a cherry tree ; 
so that by judicious grafting we can bring all 
the fruit on our places up to a high standard. 

Whenever we observe any unusually fine fruit, 
we can no doubt obtain permission from the 
possessor to cut a few scions. This should be 
done in March, before the buds swell ; and the 
grafts should be kept in the cellar packed in 
moist sand or earth till we wish to use them, so 
that they may not shrivel. When the buds on 
the trees begin to show that the sap is flowing 
freely, then graft in the scions, and in a strong 



GRAFTING, OR HORTICULTURAL CONVERSION. 305 

tree you probably have a little fruit in the third 
year. 

But on one hand do not try to convert too 
fast by cutting back everything save the grafts ; 
and on the other, convert as fast as you can 
safely, by gradually putting the whole strength 
of the tree into the grafts ; for if but one branch 
of the old stock is left to have its own way for 
all time, it will crowd out and kill the approved 
varieties with certainty. 

I am astonished that there is not a chair on 
grafting in our theological seminaries. 

20 



XVII. 

CORN AND BEANS, ETC. — (SUCCOTASH.) 

I LEAN to the Epicurean rather than to the 
Stoic philosophy. Indeed, as far as I am ac- 
quainted with the traditions of my childhood, 
I never was much of a Stoic in silent endurance 
of " outrageous fortune " armed (justly, I fear) 
with a rod, and I am satisfied that I was any- 
thing but nonchalant when her smiles meant 
mince-pie and jelly-cake. I suppose the man 
is wrapped up in the boy, just as the oak in 
the acorn. At any rate, I imagine that my 
heart will ever yearn over the place that min- 
isters so much to every sense as the garden. 
Mine, as I have shown, furnishes me with mu- 
sic ; and I have heard nothing at the academy 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 307 

in New York equal to the concerts given in the 
trees around our ivy-covered porch. 

Why should I speak of the sense of sight ! 
It seems like proving the self-evident and en- 
larging on an axiom. The genuine gardener 
enjoys seeing even a pumpkin grow, though 
the word " sprawl " is most characteristic of 
its existence. How great and varied are the 
pleasures that Nature provides when, in addition 
to being bountiful in exquisite flowers, she also 
gives to every fruit and vegetable some peculiar 
touch of grace and beauty. 

Then there is the sense of smelling, which we 
do not half appreciate enough, perhaps because 
so often it is a misfortune. When we consider 
the millions who live in cities, and through 
whose open windows the zephyr blows direct 
from the gutter instead of a bed of mignonette, 
and the millions in the country who have a pig- 
sty near the house instead of a rose-arbor, it 



3o8 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

may be questioned whether the world would 
not be better off with four senses instead of 
five. It would seem, though, that to the latter 
class the choice of the two odors was a matter 
of taste, and that the near proximity of the 
sty and the absence of the roses indicated their 
preference. 

But a man with a cultivated, indeed we may 
say broadly, a civilized nose, is blessed in a gar- 
den. We have all noticed how a drop or two of 
some powerful perfume falling on a book, table, 
or garment will distil its faint deliciousness for 
weeks and months. Not a little of the essence 
of Eden has fallen on the modern garden, and 
lingers there from early spring till winter. I do 
not refer to a cabbage patch on the wane, or 
anything else on the wane, which slovenly gar- 
deners leave around ; and it is not for me to 
irreverently dispute the voice of antiquity in re- 
gard to the onion. I must admire here as in 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 309 

some other cases that I cannot understand, the 
ancient wisdom of the world. Only great or 
rash souls willingly become heretics and trample 
on the authority of ages. 

But my garden in the main is to my modern 
unsophisticated nose like the Spice Islands of 
the Pacific Ocean. Even the fresh-turned soil 
in spring, before a seed has germinated or a 
bud swollen, has a wholesome, grateful odor ; 
and soon the reviving grass in the lawn, the 
opening of fragrant buds, and modest violets 
like timid blue eyes shyly watching you, the 
glowing crocus and wax-like hyacinths, and 
many others, all combine to fill Nature's censer 
that April winds swing to and fro. And if 
there is a piney grove near by, from which 
motherwort, anemones, and trailing arbutus 
can breathe their spirit into the floral service, 
with which the praise of the season opens, 
may I be there to worship also ! 



3IO CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

I have often asked myself, could anything 
in Paradise have surpassed some of our spring 
days, when the peach, plum, and cherry, and 
then the pear and apple trees, become huge 
bouquets ? May and June are Nature's fairy 
festival — not the luxurious richness of mid- 
summer, nor solid abundance of autumn, is 
then served up ; but she spreads a dainty, del- 
icate repast of dews and perfumes, of honey 
such as flowers distil, and all the glancing, 
airy creatures of the wing are invited. From 
every flowering tree comes the hum of small talk 
as innumerable honey-bees and yellow-jackets 
sip and gossip ; while ever and anon some great 
humble-bee goes blundering and booming 
around, like some important and blustering 
master of ceremonies. 

But the birds are the wassailers par excellence. 
They eat and drink, sing, fight, and make love 
with an abandon that is quite human. 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 3II 

You need not tell me that they don't get 
*' high," and that their extravagances may re- 
sult only from their bird nature. I know very 
well that the bobolink who lived on the edge of 
my garden last summer was more than slightly 
inebriated several times when the apples were 
in blossom. In language more forcible than 
elegant, I maintain from what he said and did 
(the test we apply to our neighbors) that he was 
" tight," and if he was not, then I don't know 
the world and have never seen any one drink 
anything stronger than cambric tea. If he had 
belonged to any temperance organization he 
ought to have been disciplined. The truth was, 
he had been hanging around a large apple-tree 
in full bloom, all day, and when evening came, 
he could not sing straight, fly straight, or do 
anything decorously, but was the most jubilant, 
incoherent, rollicking little blade that ever went 
on a spree, and in the twilight tumbled into a 



312 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

cloverrfield to bed in a manner simply scandal- 
ous. Mr. Gough should turn his attention to 
the bobolinks. 

What a chemist ISTature is ! How in the 
name of all that is wonderful can she manage to 
give every kind of flower and vegetable a 
different perfume ? Some of the most homely 
and useful products of the garden give out 
odors that are as grateful as those of choice 
flowers, just as some human lives that are busi- 
est and fullest of care have still the aroma of 
peace and rest about them. 

" Well, well," growls some impatient reader, 
" what has the garden to do with the sense of 
touch ?" 

If you had blistered your hands with a hoe 
handle, I think you would know, my captious 
reader. It will give you a man's hand instead 
of a woman's. (Now I have disgusted scores 
of the white-kid gentry.) I know modern 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 313 

society produces multitudes of women who like 
to be taken to the altar by men whose hands, 
incased in Jouvain's latest style, are almost as 
diminutive as their own. They may soon see 
the day, however, when they will wish that the 
man who offered his hand had offered little more 
in that line. But let her put him in the garden a 
while, and the lily fingers will soon grow more 
capable of wielding the weapons of life's battle. 
But it was not with the Spartan idea of dis- 
cipline and manly development that I first re- 
ferred my garden as ministering to the sense of 
touch. It can do this as delicately and pleas- 
urably as the viewless perfume. Pick off the 
opening leaves from a lilac bush, and their 
silken softness is as exquisite as their perfume. 
Varied foliage is as different to the sense of 
touch as to the eye. What sensation is more 
delicious than that of pressing your lips into 
the cool velvety centre of a double rose ! It is 



314 CORN AND EEANS, ETC. 

the perfection of kissing, and without the shght- 
est danger of scandal. 

But after all our poetry and sentiment, it is 
when we come to the sense of taste, what we 
put in our mouths, that we realize what the gar- 
den does for us. The most practical souls can 
appreciate this phase of the subject. All want 
what comes from the garden, and so the gar- 
dener thrives. He need never starve whose 
business is to supply a universal need, nor does 
a man work with less unction when, in helping 
to supply the world in general, he is also sup- 
plying himself in particular. Basing my belief 
on the sense of taste, I know that the reader 
will enter into my feelings as I set about the 
labors of later spring, the time when we pre- 
pare to secure some of the chief delicacies of 
the garden. 

We will suppose that all the fruits of the 
garden and orchard are properly set out and 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 315 

cared for, as they ought to be by this time, 
and will turn our attention to those annual 
vegetables not yet specially mentioned, that 
mature in the summer and fall. 

I have found early beets a profitable crop in 
my locality, and in '71 sold three hundred and 
eight bunches for thirty dollars and twenty- 
two cents. Having tried several varieties, I 
prefer the "Extra Early Bassano " for market 
purpose. The " Egyptian Blood " is an excel- 
lent variety, did its name not make one's flesh 
creep, and cause you to feel something like a 
cannibal. The Bassano variety may be sown 
even till the end of July, and will make good 
roots by October, but the best crops are se- 
cured from early sowings. I prefer to plant 
as early in April as the ground is dry enough. 
By putting the seed at this time in a- warm 
light soil, and covering it with old black rotted 
manure, a very early crop can be secured. 



3l6 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

Any one following this course will be in advance 
of his neighbors, and will obtain excellent 
prices. I have often sown radishes with my 
beets, but have come to the conclusion, that it 
does not pay, since the former retard the latter 
to such a degree that no gain is secured. Fre- 
quent stirring of the ground around the young 
plants greatly stimulates their growth. When 
they are about four inches high, thin them out, 
so that they will stand three or four inches from 
each other in the row, and let the rows be one 
foot apart. These thinnings make excellent 
spinach, and many will buy them for that pur- 
pose. So do not be too economical of seed, as 
it is far better to thin out, than plant over. 
When it is desired to raise the largest and latest 
crop, the soil should be cooler and moister in 
its nature, and in every case should be very rich. 
Cabbages and cauliflowers wintered over in 
cold frames should, of course, be set out in 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 317 

the open ground as soon as it can be nicely 
worked, and by the first of May they should 
be growing finely. But those grown under 
glass from seed sown in the spring, should not 
be put out till the weather is quite warm and 
settled, and all danger of severe frost is over. 
Though naturally hardy plants, they are not so 
when forced in hot-beds or even cold frames. 
After being placed in the open ground, nothing 
does more good than frequent stirrings of the 
soil around them. Be careful also never to 
set them, if it can be helped, where any of the 
cabbage family, or even turnips or radishes, 
have been grown the year before ; for if you 
do, you Avill very likely lose your crop with that 
pest of the garden, the " club-foot," which ren- 
ders the root a diseased solid mass. This evil 
is so great in my grounds, that I have almost 
given up contending with it; and in '71 my 
sales of cabbage and cauliflowers unitedly only 



3l8 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

amounted to seven dollars and eighty-nine 
cents. But where one has plenty of good 
strong land, and can put the cabbage on new 
ground every year, he will find it one of the 
most profitable of crops. The tastes of fallen 
man lean toward cabbage almost as universally 
as toward the onion, and there is a large de- 
mand for it in every market. 

Carrots, though more truly a farm crop, de- 
serve a place in the garden. The Long Orange 
is the best variety. I give a little space to it 
every year, arid find that it pays well. During 
the summer there is a demand for carrots 
bunched like beets or radishes, and to meet this 
it is perhaps best to plant the Early Horn 
variety. The seed of the last-named kind 
should be sown as soon as the frost is out. 
But even for early use I would rather employ 
the Long Orange, and if planted as soon as 
possible in spring, it will meet the summer de- 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 319 

mand in a local market, and what remain make 
large fine roots for winter. A good deal of 
latitude in time is allowed in sowing this seed, 
and the farmers (who are enterprising enough 
to raise them) put in their main crop in June. 
Any one in the country keeping a cow or even 
a horse ought to raise a large quantity, as they 
would in this way cheaply provide one of the 
best kinds of feed, and one that would make 
all other kinds of fodder more beneficial. 
Even if there were but a limited market for this 
vegetable it would pay to raise it, for a com- 
paratively small piece of ground will yield so 
largely as to reduce the expenses of keeping a 
cow and horse nearly one half. 

Celery seed should be sown as soon in April 
as the ground becomes light and warm. Make 
the rows seven or eight inches apart, and cover 
the seed very lightly. The only further care 
required till July is to keep tlic ground clear of 



320 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

weeds, and not to let the plants grow too 
thickly, and therefore weak and spindling. 
Thin out, and the last of June mow off the tops 
of the young plants in the seed-bed. This 
makes them strong and stocky, and much more 
apt to live when set out in the trenches or open 
ground. 

About the last of April or first of May, seed 
for late or winter cabbage should be sown, re- 
membering the precautions that we have before 
urged. About the last of June the young 
plants will be large enough for transferral to the 
place where they are to head. 

A little lettuce seed of the Neapolitan, Malta, 
or large Indian varieties may be sown also for 
the summer supply. These kinds make very 
large heads, and are best adapted for hot 
weather. Then set out in rich soil; the plants 
standing fifteen inches apart. After the first of 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 32 1 

June there is no call for lettuce worth mention- 
ing in my market. 

I rarely sow spinach in the spring, expecting 
a full supply from that started in the fall. In 
many localities, it might pay well to raise a 
summer crop of this. The gardener who has 
strong, heavy land, in which this vegetable 
would not winter over well, might find it very 
profitable to sow the seed in the spring. He 
certainly would, if he could find a good market 
in June, and then he would have his ground 
clear for celery or some late crop. 

Early turnips have never payed in my garden, 
though I have tried them several times. Expe- 
rience in other localities might reverse this. 
The seed should be sown as soon as the frost is 
out, and sown thickly, for the black fly will 
want his share. Thin out, so that the roots 
will be at least six inches apart in the row. 

Lime dusted over the young plants is said to 
21 



32 2 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

keep off the insects, but I find nothing hke httle 
chickens. 

For the last two or three years, I have only 
raised a few very early potatoes for home use. 
They are a farm crop, and as I can raise a 
bushel of strawberries almost as easily as the 
potatoes, I prefer to take the nine dollars that 
the latter will bring, and buy nine bushels of 
potatoes. And yet, if one had plenty of land 
adapted to the growth of this "corner-stone" 
vegetable, and kept a horse, so that nearly all 
the work could be done with a plough, it would 
no doubt pay well to raise the Early Rose. I 
have known them to sell as high as three dollars 
a bushel, and a good crop at one dollar and 
fifty cents would be very satisfactory. If it is 
possible that I have a reader who dOes not 
know how to cultivate the potato, let him ask 
the first Irishman he meets, and he will get an 
answer not far out of the way. At the same 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 323 

time, there is scarcely a vegetable, with which 
soil, locality, and culture make a greater differ- 
ence ; and those raised on a sandy loam are 
often as much better than those from wet land, 
as light bread than dough. 

I have always found, that a small space 
devoted to cucumbers paid well, and of course 
the home market must be supplied with this 
vegetable. A crisp young cucumber, picked 
with the dew on it, and sliced for breakfast, is 
as different from the wilted article often found 
in city markets, as sweet sixteen from sixty. 

As I have said before, it is best to make the 
hills quite early in the season. This can be 
done by opening small round holes, four feet 
apart each way, and filling them with mingled 
soil and old rotted manure, heaping all up into 
little mounds for the sun to warm and mellow. 
Then, some time from the first to the tenth of 
May, these can be levelled down and the seed 



324 CORN AND BEANS, ETC 

planted. . It is best to plant from fifteen to 
twenty seeds in each hill, so that the bugs may 
have their share and still leave some for the 
grower. They are not at all considerate, but 
take all they can, and my plan is to have more 
than they can destroy ; just as your cool generals 
calculate they can carry a point, and still lose 
three-fourths of the men they start with. At 
the same time, like the generals, you must kill 
all the opposing bugs you can. 

Musk and water melons require similar treat- 
ment. If the ground is light and inclined to 
drouth, the hills should be made level with 
ground around; but if heavy and damp, a rise 
of six inches would be of benefit. 

I also make cold frames very useful in growing 
cucumbers. About the first of May, the lettuce 
and radish crops in them are all sold, and the 
large English varieties of " cues," as the truck- 
men call them, or if preferred, the good old 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 325 

standard kind, the "Improved White Spined," 
can be planted and covered with glass. With 
this artificial heat they will come forward very 
rapidly, and if kept well aired and watered, will 
give a fine and early yield. Some hasten the 
crop very much, by placing a small box covered 
with four panes of glass over the hills in the 
open garden. Plants so protected can be started 
by the middle of April. 

The curious reader has doubtless failed to see, 
thus far, the bearing of these pages on the sug- 
gestive Indian word " Succotash," with which I 
commenced this chapter. This has been on the 
good old principle, that we try to save the best 
till the last. It is probably known, that this 
savory dish which crowns our dinner tables in 
July and August, is a relic of the red-man ; and 
it is the one Indian antiquity that I am specially 
interested in. The vanished tribes will never be 
forgotten while corn and beans grow, and this 



326 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

happy combination, which they taught to the 
pale face, quite comforts us for their absence. 
Succotash may not be quite so romantic as war- 
whoops and scalpings, but then we belong to a 
practical age. 

But before we revel in this heathen dainty, 
we must, like the mythical Hiawatha, wrestle 
with Mondamin, "conquer and overcome" 
him, 

" Make a bed for him to lie in 

Where the rain may fall upon him, 
Where the smi may come and warm him." 

In other words, we must first plant our corn. 

Happily, the raising of this delicious vegetable 
is no great mystery. The Indian squaws suc- 
ceeded well with it, and in view of this fact no 
manly and civilized gardener would like to ad- 
mit of failure. A rich light soil and good cult- 
ure rarely fail in giving a good crop year after 
year. There is almost a universal demand for 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 327 

it in every market, and by planting the diffj.-cnt 
kinds, and by successive plantings from the first 
of May till the last of June, a good supply can 
be maintained a long time. A little well-rotted 
manure in the hill with the seed greatly hastens 
and strengthens its growth. I have found the 
" Early Crosby, Early Eight Rowed, and Stow- 
ell's Late Evergreen," the best varieties. 

Where the corn is grown some distance from 
the house, the crows are often troublesome. 
They are said to be a very sagacious bird, and 
having once found a row, will go up and down 
it, seemingly knowing just where to look for the 
hills. My father once had an old colored gar- 
dener, who made the rows so crooked that the 
crows could not find them, for having never 
been to Congress they expected things to be on 
the square. 

I also recall a story that I have heard which 
suggests another remedy. I can vouch for the 



328 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

fact that this story has really been told, and by 
an ancient man, not woman, and this is more 
than can be said of many stories. If the result 
was more favorable to crow nature than to hu- 
man nature, that is a fault of the facts. 

Once upon a time a man planted corn, and 
the crows dug it up. The aforesaid man had 
great faith in whiskey ; but the aforesaid crows 
knew nothing about whiskey. The man 
thought that if he soaked some corn in the " fu- 
sel," and put it in the field, the crows might be- 
come so thoroughly corned that he could catch, 
preserve, and hang them up as warnings, so that 
their companions might shun the place where 
there was danger of getting into a like pickle. 
The experiment turned out differently, but 
even better than he expected. For a crow soon 
appeared and gorged himself with the spirit- 
soaked corn. The consequences were quite hu- 
man. From his crop it went to his head, which 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 329 

soon felt " queer," then dizzy. He tried to step 
off in his wonted stately manner, but tumbled 
into a furrow. He staggered up a corn-hill, and 
stood there, in bewildered, helpless imbecility, 
blinking at the trees and fences that seemed 
dancing a hornpipe in the spring sunshine. 

Just at this inopportune moment a dozen or 
more crows came sailing toward the field, bent 
on a good square meal from their accustomed 
"pickings and stealings," as a politician would 
express himself, when something in the peculiar 
appearance of their "discouraged" companion 
arrested their attention, and they gathered round 
him with no slight cazvs for wonder. The san- 
guine man that had soaked the corn, that had 
" corned " the crow, expected to see i\\\ the rest 
follow suit, like so many of his neighbors. He 
hardly expected to find a higher standard of vir- 
tue in his corn-field than in that social centre, 
the village tavern. But for once, at least, it was 



^^O CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

proved that there Is honor among thieves, for 
the robbers stood around their staggering fellow, 
grave and remonstrative, and seemingly much 
scandalized. Then from being stupidly drunk, 
the crow became pugnaciously drunk, and 
wanted to fight them all around for nothing, d 
la " Sixth Ward." From this he passed on to 
the maudlin and sentimental stage, and offered 
some uncouth gallantries to the oldest and most 
sedate crow of the party. 

This was past endurance. There was a brief 
clamorous council, and with an expression of 
unmlngled disgust resting on their usually 
solemn and sanctimonious faces, they took wing 
and were seen no more. 

" Consider the ravens," O ye children of 
men ! It only remains to be said that the in- 
ebriated crow thus socially "cut' and ostra- 
cized, not having a gutter to lie In, like lordly 
man, did the next best thing possible, and tum- 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 33 1 

bled head first into a furrow ; from whence the 
man, the Mephistopheles of the plot, took him, 
and hung him up in black, as warning to other 
crows — would that I could add, to other men. 

Happy termination. The corn grew and 
prospered, and became the first ingredient of the 
delicious Indian compound. 

There is no occasion to enlarge greatly on 
beans. People of average intelligence are ex- 
pected to know this vegetable. 

The two varieties that I have found most 
profitable are the " Dwarf German Wax," as a 
bush bean, and the " Large Lima," for poles. 
Of the former twcnty-thrcc and one-fourth bush- 
els were sold for fifty-one dollars ; of the latter, 
nineteen and one-eighth bushels, for thirty-six 
dollars and seventy-seyen cents. 

The Dwarf German Wax can be planted very 
early, and they seem quite hardy. I have suc- 
ceeded well with those put in light warm ground, 



332 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

quite early in April. This variety needs rich 
soil, and rotted manure drilled in with the seed 
is of great advantage. The limas should not 
be planted till about the tenth of May in our 
latitude, as they cannot endure cold or wet 
weather. Unless the ground of the garden is 
rich and light, it is well to prepare the hills 
around poles, as described for cucumbers. 

Many lose their first plantings by covering 
too deeply. Limas should be pushed under the 
soil about an inch only, eye or germ down- 
wards. Seemingly they do not like being bur- 
ied, and soon reappear again, thus tending to 
substantiate the ghost theory still so prevalent. 
Not unfrequently the surprised amateur has 
poked them back again and then they stayed, 
but the poles remained bare. If you want to 
obtain anything from Nature, treat her as 
" lovely woman," and let her have her ov/n way 
as far as possible, however odd her methods. 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. ^;^^ 

Arbitrary measures won't answer, as some of 
my readers outside of the garden may have dis- 
covered. 

I now consider that I have done all in my 
power to secure succotash, and therefore happi- 
ness, to my readers. May not come grateful 
sighs of memory mingled with the mouthsful 
next July? If what is esteemed the profound- 
est human philosophy be true, I have gained 
some hold on the popular heart. 



We close with a few marriages, as all ortho- 
dox stories should. 

It now but remains to link the labors of late 
spring and of summer with those before de- 
scribed, as appropriately commencing with 
autumn, and then to bow myself out. 

The tomato has probably been the most 
profitable vegetable that I have raised. It will 



334 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

grow on any soil, and after being once started, 
requires but little attention. The main point is 
to have good, strong, stocky plants by the lOth 
of May, to set out in the open ground. Every- 
one can grow tomatoes, and nearly every one 
does, who has a few feet of land ; and since they 
will flourish where a weed will live, success 
crowns the most careless culture. But in having 
tomatoes very early, any amount of skill and 
effort can be expended. In the height of the 
season, there are times when they will not sell 
at any price, while I have sold those first ripen- 
ing at twelve cents a quart. Therefore every 
year we have half a dozen or more " novelties " 
introduced, each said to be earlier than any- 
thing ever grown before. But gardeners are 
annually losing their childlike faith in regard to 
these. Still try a few. It is an innocent form 
of gambling and will add interest to the garden. 
But we would advise that the main supply be 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 335 

of the "Solid Smooth Red," "Trophy," and 
" General Grant." I am going to try the 
" General " four years longer. But in order to 
be first in the market, sow the seed of some very 
early variety in a hot-bed as soon in March as 
you can, and about the middle of April transfer 
the plants to a deep cold frame, where the 
glass will be at least two feet from the bottom 
of the pit. Set them out six or eight inches 
apart, so that the plants will grow bushy and 
strong. Give plenty of air in the heat of the 
day,, and in ivarin rains take off the glass 
altogether. Thus the plants will be very vigor- 
ous and hardy by May lOth. Set them out in 
a warm and rather dry spot in the open garden, 
and do not let the soil be too rich, as this tends 
to growth of vines rather than fruit, and you 
will beat your neighbors, whi:h is a very proper 
thing for a gardener to do. My sales in '71 
were eighty-two and one-fou/th bushels, realiz- 



336 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

ing one hundred and twenty-five dollars and 
sixty' cents. In '72 the results were not very 
different. A great many pretty experiments 
can be tried in pruning and training the tomato, 
which the amateur's genius or leisure will sug- 
gest. The majority of us are satisfied to set 
out the plants and hoe them. 

We next come to the treatment of the straw- 
berry-beds previous to their fruiting, and can 
assure the reader that the crop can be greatly 
enhanced by proper culture, during April and 
especially May. In the first place, if it was not 
done in fall, a good top-dressing of manure in 
the early spring stimulates the plants very much. 
If the manure is fine, it can be scattered im- 
mediately over the plants, as well as around 
them. If they were covered with coarse 
manure in the fall, then this can be forked in 
between the rows in April. Good cultivation, 
frequent stirrings of the soil until they begin to 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 337 

blossom, adds to their vigor greatly ; but as 
soon as the fruit commences to form, the roots 
should be in no Avay disturbed, but another and 
entirely different course adopted, which, prob- 
ably carried out, often works wonders. I refer 
to judicious mulching. 

Say that the soil between the rows is light, 
and free of weeds, as it ought to be. Then 
after the first rain, when the ground has been 
well moistened, cover the intervening spaces 
between the plants thickly and closely with 
leaves, or better still, fresh grass just cut from 
the lawn. Only unparalleled drouth will 
greatly injure the bed so treated. The berries 
will be much larger and finer, and the plants 
continue longer in bearing. Moreover, the fruit 
will be perfectly clean, and will need no washing 
for the table ; a process that robs it of flavor 
and beauty. For these reasons, it is far better 

to keep the plants in straight rows, as the 
23 



338 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

ground can then be readily covered with grass, 
leaves, or straw, at the time of blossoming. 
Where the beds have been permitted to run to- 
gether, or where they are cultivated in wide, 
matted rows, it is next to impossible to mulch 
them well, and they are very apt to suffer from 
drouth. This was the case with my beds in '71. 
I could not bring myself to cut out the strong, 
thrifty plants, so as to leave good spaces be- 
tween the rows. The ground Vv^as rich, so I 
concluded to let all fruit. If May had been cool 
and moist (the weather that the strawberry de- 
lights in), my crop would have been enormous. 
But, from the middle of May till some time in 
June, we had a very unusual drouth. I tried 
watering, as before intimated, and perhaps 
helped some of my beds very much, but others, 
I think, were injured. It is well known to gar- 
deners that if you once commence watering in a 
dry time, you must continue, or the plants v/ill 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 339 

suffer far more than if left to fight it out them- 
selves. If you can thoroughly soak your beds 
and keep them moist, watering always in the 
evening, they will do splendidly. But if you 
water in the morning, or while the sun shines, 
the plants will be scalded and the fruit injured ; 
and if the ground is left to dry out thoroughly 
after an artificial watering, still greater harm 
will be done. My difficulties and losses in try- 
ing to water a large area are thus plainly indi- 
cated, even though I had the water drawn in a 
barrel by a horse. Still, as I have stated, I 
raised fifty-seven bushels of fruit on five-eighths 
of an acre, but am satisfied that the same num- 
ber of plants, kept in rows and mulched, would 
have yielded over seventy bushels, and at less 
cost and culture. 

On the 31st of May three quarts were picked. 
What though they were sour, as the first ripen- 
ing always are ? They were big and red, with 



340 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

something of the ambrosial strawberry flavor, 
and had the exquisite aroma that almost rivals 
the rose. 

As has been hinted, it is the time-honored 
custom of story-tellers to marry off some of their 
principal characters in their closing chapter. I 
have already united my corn and beans in the 
delightful combination of succotash. Single 
beans and single corn are very well, but they 
are much better together. Good marriages 
always improve character. 

It still remains for me to provide for my 
blushing strawberries and delicate raspberries, 
and for them "nobody and nothing" is good 
enough, but cream from our Alderney cow. 
The happy fruit is picked for breakfast with the 
dew upon it for wedding diamonds. 

And wlien the cream appears, 
Is soon "o'er head and ears." 

Who would not be a gardener, when he 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 34I 

could solemnize such unions three times a day ? 
Do not imagine that you can do this as well in 
the city as the country. There may be more 
parade of silver and gold in the service, but 
city berries are too often like city belles ; city 
cream like Wall Street men. They have seen 
too much of the world. 

To change a subject that may not be agree- 
able to all, we turn to one somewhat in con- 
trast, and remark that winter cabbage should 
be set out before the Fourth of July, in our 
latitude, and it would be better that the large 
late varieties were growing in the open ground 
the last of June. 

I might refer to other vegetables, from which 
some slight revenue was obtained, or might be ; 
but as this is mainly a record of experience, they 
scarcely have place in these pages. If this trea- 
tise is in any sense exhaustive, it deserves such 
character solely from its effect on the reader. 



342 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

We will, therefore, close with celery, the 
latest, and perhaps the most delicious vegetable 
of the garden. 

Before the lOth of August, it should all be 
in the trenches, where it is to grow and blanch. 
Some prefer to set out the plants on level 
ground, in rows four or five feet apart, and 
doubtless this is the most economical way of 
raising it by the quantity, especially where the 
dwarf varieties are used. I have practised 
both methods with success. A very rich soil 
is indispensable for this crop. In fall it is my 
plan to draw the earth up around the plants 
about once a week, so that the blanching 
process will go forward with the growth. 

I much prefer storing my celery in the open 
garden during the winter. It is very easily 
and simply done. Selecting some gravelly 
slope where there is thorough drainage, I have 
a trench cut, a foot wide and about the depth 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 343 

of the celery's length, so that when packed 
close in the trench, in the natural position in 
which it grew, its top leaves will be a little 
above the surface of the ground. As the 
weather grows colder, late in November, the 
earth can be drawn up till the leaves are nearly- 
all covered. This should not be done till 
freezing weather has really come, for too early 
and close earthing up might cause decay. Just 
before winter sets in, cover heavily with leaves 
or straw. Thus all frost will be kept out, and 
you will be able to get at the plants any time. 
Under this treatment they will usually keep in 
excellent order till spring. 

I prefer to get my celery plants nicely grow- 
ing during July. Places from which early 
crops were taken furnish the needed space, and 
this is put in readiness by the most thorough 
enriching of the soil. As my ground is lim- 
ited, and as I raise the large varieties, I usually 



344 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

prepare trenches about eight inches deep and 
eighteen wide for the plants. Then we are on 
the watch for showers, so as to get as many out 
as possible before the rain. 

Sometimes we have three or four showers a 
day, and the cloud scenery resulting is often 
marvellously beautiful; but usually they make 
their appearance some hot afternoon about 
three or four o'clock. 

A person living in the city can have little 
idea of thunder-storms as they occur in this 
mountain region. The hills about us, while 
they attract the electrified clouds, are also our 
protection, for, abounding in iron ore, they be- 
come huge lightning-rods above the houses 
and hamlets at their bases. But little recks old 
Bear Mountain, or Cro' Nest, Jove's most fiery 
bolts. The rocky splinters fly for a moment ; 
some oak or chestnut comes quivering down ; 
but soon the mosses, like kindly charity, have 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 345 

covered up the wounded rock, and three or 
four saphngs have grown from the roots of the 
bhghted tree. 

But the storm we witness from our safe and 
sheltered homes is often grand beyond descrip- 
tion. At first, in the distant west, a cloud rises 
so dark that you can scarcely distinguish it from 
a blue highland. But a low muttering of thun- 
der vibrates through the sultry air, and we know 
what is coming. Soon the afternoon sun is shad- 
ed, and a deep, unnatural twilight settles upon 
the landscape, like the shadow of a great sorrow 
on a face that was smiling a moment before. 
The thunder grows heavier, like the rumble and 
roar of an approaching battle. The western 
arch of the sky is black as night. The eastern 
arch is bright and sunny, and as you glance from 
side to side, you cannot but think of those who, 
comparatively innocent and happy at first, cloud 
their lives in maturer years with evil and crime, 



346 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

and darken the future with the wrath of heaven. 
At last the vanguard of black flying clouds, dis- 
jointed, jagged, the rough skirmish line of the 
advancing storm, is over our heads. Back of 
these, in one dark, solid mass, comes the tem- 
pest. For a moment there is a sort of hush of 
expectation, like the lull before a battle. The 
trees on the distant brow of a mountain are seen 
to toss and writhe, but as yet no sound is heard. 
Soon there is a faint, far-away rushing noise, 
the low, deep prelude of Nature's grand musical 
discord that is to follow. There is a vivid 
flash, and a startling peal of thunder breaks forth 
overhead, and rolls away with countless rever- 
berations among the hills. In the meantime the 
distant rushing sound has developed into an in- 
creasing roar. Half way down the mountain 
side the trees are swaying wildly. At the base 
stands a grove, motionless, expectant, like a 
square of infantry awaiting an impetuous cavalry 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 347 

charge. In a moment it comes. At first the 
shock seems terrible. Every branch bends low. 
Dead limbs rattle down like hail. Leaves torn 
away fly wildly through the air. But the sturdy 
trunks stand their ground, and the baffled tem- 
pest passes on. Mingling with the rush of the 
wind and reverberations of thunder, a new 
sound, a new part now enters into the grand 
harmony. At first it is a low, continuous roar, 
caused by the falling rain upon the leaves. It 
grows louder fast, like the pattering feet of a 
coming multitude. Then the great drops fall 
around, yards apart, like scattering shots. 
They grow closer, and soon a streaming torrent 
drives you to shelter. The next heavy peal is 
to the eastward, showing that the bulk of the 
shower is past. The roar of the thunder dies 
away down the river. The thickly falling rain 
contracts your vision to a narrow circle, out of 
which Cozzcns's c^i'cat hotel and Bear Mountain 



348 CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 

loom vaguely. The flowers and shrubbery 
bend to the moisture with the air of one who 
stands and takes it. The steady, continuous 
plash upon the roof slackens into a quiet patter- 
ing of rain-drops. The west is lightening up ; 
by and by a long line of blue is seen above Cro' 
Nest. The setting sun shines out upon a puri- 
fied and more beautiful landscape. Every leaf, 
every spire of grass is brilliant with gems of 
moisture. The cloud scenery has all changed. 
The sun is setting in unclouded splendor. Not 
the west but the east is now black with storm ; 
but the rainbow, emblem of hope and God's 
mercy, spans its blackness, and in the skies we 
again have suggested to us a life, once clouded 
and darkly threatened by evil, but now, through 
penitence and reform, ending in peace and 
beauty, , God spanning the wrong of the past 
with His rich and varied promises of forgive- 
ness. At last the skies are clear again. Along 



CORN AND BEANS, ETC. 349 

the eastern horizon the retreating storm sends 
up occasional flashes, that seem hke regretful 
thoughts of the past. Then night comes on, 
cool, moonlit, breathless. Not a leaf stirs 
where an hour before the sturdiest limbs bent to 
the earth. This must be Nature's commentary 
on the "peace that passeth all understanding." 



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